The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity - Hardcover

A monumental achievement, Maurice Cranston's trilogy provides the definitive account of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's turbulent life. Now available in paperback, this final volume completes a masterful biography of one of the most important philosophers of all time. The Solitary Self traces the last tempestuous years of Rousseau's life. "The Solitary Self is a fitting coda to a magisterial work. Cranston . . . is a compelling stylist who narrates Rousseau's tribulations with a mixture of compassion and dry humor."--Thomas Pavel, Wall Street Journal "Cranston not only recreates for his readers a rounded view of Rousseau himself, he sets it firmly in the social and political context of Europe's ancien regime. . . . An engrossing work of history."--John Gray, New Statesman "Cranston's painstaking archival research and lucid style yield the most detailed and thoroughly documented biography of Rousseau written in English. His epilogue masterfully sums up Rousseau's importance as political philosopher and initiator of romantic sensibilities."--Choice "Anyone curious about the paradoxes of a most paradoxical man will not go wrong by starting with this invaluable biography."--James Miller, Washington Post Book World "As absorbing as a picaresque novel."--Naomi Bliven, New Yorker "A monument of scholarship. . . . This amazing biography, like Boswell's account of Johnson, recreates the daily life of Rousseau: what he did, who he saw, what he said, what he wrote. . . . We may be quite confident that we hold in our hands the authoritative account of this life. The definitive Rousseau."--Isaac Kramnick, New Republic Maurice Cranston (1920-1993), a distinguished scholar and recipient of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his biography of John Locke, was professor of political science at the London School of Economics. His numerous books include The Romantic Movement and Philosophers and Pamphleteers, and translations of Rousseau's The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.

In this third and final volume of his masterly biography, Maurice Cranston traces the last tempestuous years of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life. From his brilliant authorship of the Confessions, the Dialogues, and the Reveries to his controversial religious views, from his notorious public quarrel with David Hume in England to his clandestine return to France, from his unsettled wanderings to his death in 1778 - these and other critical events in Rousseau's most embattled years are detailed in this sympathetic yet balanced portrait. In 1762, with the condemnation of Emile and The Social Contract harried by both church and state, Rousseau fled Paris, seeking refuge in Neuchatel and England. Deemed a social outcast and beset by feelings of persecution and abuse, not wholly unwarranted, the philosopher turned in despair to the production of autobiographical works intended to reveal his essential innocence and integrity. Through this bitter introspection, Rousseau transformed his solitude into some of the most enduring literature of his time.