Emile

Rousseau imagines a boy named Emile raised from birth by a tutor in the countryside, away from the corruptions of society, and describes his education stage by stage: learning through the senses and experience rather than books, a trade for his hands, and religion and morality only when he is old enough to understand them.

Published in 1762, Emile was burned in Paris because of its chapter on religion, yet it transformed ideas about childhood and education. Its last book, on the education of Emile's future wife Sophie, provoked a famous reply from Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was born in Geneva, lost his mother days after his birth, ran away from an apprenticeship at fifteen and lived for years as a wanderer, a music copyist and the protégé of Madame de Warens. In 1750 an essay arguing that civilisation had corrupted humanity won a prize and made him famous overnight.

In 1762 he published both The Social Contract and Emile; both were condemned, and he had to flee. His Confessions, one of the first modern autobiographies, admits among other things that he placed his own five children in a foundling hospital. Few writers have influenced politics, education and the romantic idea of the self so deeply.