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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.