Books and Characters, French and English

The Rousseau Affair

Of all the disputes and agitations of Bourbon France none is more remarkable than the famous quarrel between Rousseau and his friends, which disturbed French society for so many years, and profoundly affected the life and the character of the most strange and perhaps the most potent of the precursors of the Revolution.

Voltaire and Frederick the Great

Just as modern Germany dates from the accession of Frederick to the throne of Prussia, so modern France dates from the establishment of Voltaire on the banks of the Lake of Geneva. The intersection of those two momentous lives forms one of the most curious and one of the most celebrated incidents in history.

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Books and Characters, French and English

Strachey's 1915 work Books and Characters contains essays on a variety of characters from literary history, including (among others) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean-Mariet Arouet de Voltaire and Frederick II of Prussia.