Voltaire Paperback – March 12, 2012

Davidson’s biography of Voltaire does not get into detail on many of Voltaire’s most polemical writings against the Catholic Church and pre-Revolution French politics. But it does a superb job of giving the reader a complete picture of Voltaire the man. Prior to reading the book I had an image of Voltaire as a “philosophe” like Rousseau and Diderot but never saw him in the full context of his life. His long but hot and cold friendship with Frederick the Great is spelled out in the course of the book as is his relationship with the two most important women in his life, Emilie du Chatelet and his niece, Marie Denis. His multi-year work with Emilie in science related to Emilie’s love of Newton and her translation of Newton’s Principia was an element of Voltaire’s life I never realized. Davidson provides a rich context for Voltaire’s most famous works like Candide and he gives extensive background to the Letters Concerning the English Nation when Voltaire first expressed in detail his criticism of French society. But primarily the reader gets a sense of Voltaire as a brilliant writer and superb manipulator, a man of endless energy who late in his life turned his exile to his estate on the Swiss border into a thriving community complete with a successful watch-making business. The book shows Voltaire’s flaws, especially his tendency to exaggerate or lie outright when needed, and does not shy away for his aristocratic lifelong assumptions about privilege or his prejudices. Davidson also shows clearly when an elderly Voltaire became a chief spokesman against the torture and abuses of the French judicial system. Voltaire had one foot firmly embedded in the very system he criticized and he always took full advantage of that fact. But his writing skills and critical insights gradually made him an enemy of that system. Davidson’s writing is engaging and he does an impressive job of dividing up Voltaire’s complex life into sections that make the book a smooth read. It is an excellent biography.

I was looking for a book about the life of Voltair, not a discussion of his writings. This is the book. To know the man is to know why he thought like he did and why he enjoyed being part of the Enlightenment. He was well aware of what was going on around him and the freedoms from church dogma that sprang from it. Enjoyed the book a lot.

Ian Davidson's "Voltaire: A Life" is a full-scale biography of the indispensable Enlightenment thinker. Voltaire's early years are discussed, and it was not long into adulthood before his views on free speech, free thought, and religion got him on the wrong side of the ancien régime (readers will discover just how authoritarian that régime was).Voltaire was exiled to England in the late 1720s, and later in life went to Prussia, spending time in King Frederick's court there. He was later exiled to Geneva and the French frontier, and the biography describes Voltaire's plays and philosophical writings—he took stances against the establishment but wanted recognition from it as well. Later in life Voltaire campaigned for justice against the many excesses of the ancien régime and even became involved in the watch industry.Davidson also looks at the character and personality traits of Voltaire, as well as his relationships, finances, and health issues. The author closes by recalling Voltaire's return to Paris at the end of his life. Voltaire was one of the most important figures of the eighteenth century, and anyone curious about him would find this biography a rewarding read.

For the most part, the author refrains from judging, though not always on Voltaire himself whom I occasionally found myself defending in my mind. But it's a nice, rollicking read. Well-researched, highly recommended.

If you are like me and are interested in the content and importance of Voltaire's political philosophy and the controversies it generated, this is not the book for you. Here we have a year by year history of his loves, travels, friendships, and when he wrote what and published it. But we have very superficial discussions of what he wrote or its impact, except the author's run-ins with the authorities. The book does paint an informative portrait of the time and Voltaire's struggles with the expectations of the time, but it describes little on why Voltaire's writing generated the controversies. A bit too much gossip, missing necessary substantive discussion.

I had read a little summary information about Voltaire, and this biography was carefully referenced and interestingly written. The author is careful to cite all claims and discusses the relative substantiation for popular, too-good-to-be-true Voltaire anecdotes. Delightfully, the full scope of Voltaire's life is both more complicated and still with some amazing, gasp-inspiring moments. I'm nearly finished and and feel like I have made a new friend and hero through reading this biography.

This is a solid biography, based primarily on the letters (it hardly deals with the literature or ideas at all). The last part is a bit tedious -- we get a lot of unnecessary detail about practically everything. There are very interesting things I learned from this biography that I had missed in others, e.g. how very, very wealthy Voltaire became. This made him somewhat more invulnerable as his life went on than in his younger days. The biography makes clear that while Voltaire was a great man, he was a very tiresome human being. It is also well noted in the biography that he was prone to making dramatic gestures and then obsequiously backing away from them. Still, Voltaire remains surprising: it is not everyone who in their 70s in the 18th century starts up a surprising and profitable watchmaking industry from scratch!

I already knew a lot about Voltaire from Will Durant's History of Civilization, but this definitive biography fed me the juicy details. Very well written and researched. High recommended and very entertaining.