Voltaire

The earliest letter addressed to David Hume, written on 20 August 1764, is rather elaborately jokey: Idol of Gaul, I worship thee not. The very cloven foot for which thou art worship'd I despise, yet...

Colette wrote later of the way that a free and solitary childhood and adolescence, with plenty of opportunity to develop self-awareness and without any pressure to self-expression, had shaped her mind before the compulsion to...

Looking back on her early education, MC wrote I managed to develop into a curiously determined independent little personality, with ideas and opinions more suited to some clever young man. . . . I instinctively...

Much of ID 's education was self-administered. She read voraciously whether in Denmark or Africa, and was particularly well grounded in the Danish, other European, and English literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: Spinoza

Ross 's epilogue both praises FD 's work and seeks to recommend it by associating it with Darwin , John Wesley , and Voltaire .

After Elinor Sutherland (later EG ) turned fourteen she no longer had a governess. Eager for intellectual stimulation, she took it upon herself to read everything in her stepfather 's book collection, which had recently...

She became acquainted with most of the intellectual and cultural leaders of French society. She visited Voltaire and Emilie du Châtelet at Cirey in 1738-9. These two, as well as other Enlightenment figures such as...

EG and her husband both contributed translations to Voltaire 's works in English, issued by William Kenrick in these years.

This is unusual: a compliment from a Frenchman to Montagu, whose Shakespeare criticism was anti-Voltaire and therefore anti-French.

Its heroine, Nora Penshurst, is a New Woman, educated, independent, and assertive. She is the daughter of a musician with bluff and hearty tastes, whom BH is said to have based on her father...

The title-page quotes W. B. Yeats : Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams. The country community where the story is set centres closely on Crump, the great house of the ancient Lyndesay...

This volume finds her canvassing many of the same topics as the one before, and alluding to many of the same authors, though this time (after Ecclesiasticus from the Apocrypha on her title-page) she begins...

The novel opens with a philosophical dialogue (between males) which makes reference to Voltaire , Hume , Rousseau , and Godwin 's Caleb Williams. Its subtitle sounds like a pointer to autobiographical content, and...

ATL 's stepfather was the poet François de Bachaumont , a man of wit and pleasure whose gifts and character were admired by Voltaire .

Both Fénelon and Voltaire praised ATL 's ability and achievements (in contexts where they did not need to flatter her).