Abstract

The Letters on the English is a key Enlightenment masterpiece, a manifesto that illustrates a way of thinking that helped create a worldview that remains important today. It was also through this work that Voltaire reinvented himself as a prose writer, after a first phase of his career when he was best known as a poet.
This volume traces the genesis and context of Letters (Voltaire's stay in England, between 1726 and 1728), and highlights the main issues. Nicholas Cronk's introduction is followed by a complete list of editions published during Voltaire's lifetime, translations of this text, and the English version, the publication of which in 1733 shortly preceded the publication of the text in French. Anna Marie Roos also provides a section on the relationship between Royal Society President Martin Folkes (1690-1754) and a possible portrait by Hogarth of the young Voltaire in London with him at a coffeehouse.