




Transcribed from the 1894 Cassell & Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk





LETTERS ON ENGLAND
by Voltaire


INTRODUCTION


Francois Marie Arouet, who called himself Voltaire, was the son of
Francois Arouet of Poitou, who lived in Paris, had given up his office of
notary two years before the birth of this his third son, and obtained
some years afterwards a treasurer's office in the Chambre des Comptes.
Voltaire was born in the year 1694.  He lived until within ten or eleven
years of the outbreak of the Great French Revolution, and was a chief
leader in the movement of thought that preceded the Revolution.  Though
he lived to his eighty-fourth year, Voltaire was born with a weak body.
His brother Armand, eight years his senior, became a Jansenist.  Voltaire
when ten years old was placed with the Jesuits in the College Louis-le-
Grand.  There he was taught during seven years, and his genius was
encouraged in its bent for literature; skill in speaking and in writ