Letters Concerning the English Nation (The World's Classics)

Inspired by Voltaire's two-year stay in England (1726-8), this volume is one of the key works of the Enlightenment. Exactly contemporary with "Gulliver's Travels" and "The Beggar's Opera", Voltaire's controversial pronouncements on politics, philosophy, religion and literature have placed the "Letters" among the great Augustan satires. Voltaire wrote most of the book in English, in which he was fluent and witty, and it fast became a bestseller in Britain. He re-wrote it in French as the "Lettres Philosophiques", and current editions in English translate his French. This edition restores for the modern reader Voltaire's own English text, allowing the reader to appreciate him as a stylist at first hand. It is the only critical edition of the original text and, as well as providing an introduction and notes, it includes accounts of Voltaire by contemporary English observers. Nicholas Cronk is the editor of "The World's Classics"'s title of Voltaire's "Candide".