Letters on England

Exiled to England in 1726, Voltaire spent more than two years there and came back an admirer. In these letters he describes the Quakers, the Parliament, the freedom of trade and religion, inoculation against smallpox, the science of Newton and the philosophy of Locke, and the strange genius of Shakespeare, always with an eye on what France lacked.

When the book appeared in French in 1734 it was condemned and burned in Paris, because every compliment to England was an attack on the French monarchy and church. It is lively, witty and a good place to see how the Enlightenment spread. Read Candide for Voltaire the storyteller.

François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), who called himself Voltaire, was imprisoned twice in the Bastille as a young man for his satirical verses. Exiled to England, he returned full of admiration for its freedoms and wrote the Letters on England, which were burned in Paris.

He lived for years with the scientist Émilie du Châtelet, spent a stormy period at the court of Frederick the Great and finally settled at Ferney, near the Swiss border, from where he campaigned against religious intolerance and miscarriages of justice. He wrote plays, history and poetry, but his tales, Candide and Zadig, are what most readers love today.