Voltaire Biography

Voltaire rose to prominence as one of the Enlightenment's most influential writers. The dramatic play Zare, the historical book The Age of Louis XIV, and the comic novella Candide are among his most famous works. He was twice imprisoned and spent many years in exile after clashing with French authorities over his politically and spiritually sensitive writings. In 1778, he died shortly after arriving in Paris. Voltaire's biography is quite an interesting thing to read which showcases his books, nature and other aspects. You will also get to learn about the Voltaire biography book and how it changed the minds of readers and inspires them.

This Voltaire biography also provides other details on his life, giving a clear picture to learn how he excelled.

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Voltaire Biography

Voltaire is a pseudonym for François-Marie Arouet, who was born in Paris on November 21, 1694. He was one of the finest French authors of all time. Despite the fact that just a handful of his writings are still read, he is remembered across the world as a valiant warrior against tyranny, intolerance, and cruelty. Voltaire's work actively propagates a vision of development to which people of all nations have stayed sensitive via its critical capability, wit, and sarcasm. Voltaire biography books are quite interesting to read. His life covered the latter years of classicism and the dawn of the revolutionary era, and his words and actions affected the course of European culture throughout this period of transition.

During his literary life, he had many brushes up with authorities. In May 1716, Voltaire's caustic wit brought him into conflict with the authorities when he was briefly banished from Paris for writing poems insulting the French regent's family. However, the young writer couldn't keep his mouth shut, and a year later he was caught and imprisoned in the Bastille for writing scandalous poems alleging the regent had an incestuous connection with his daughter. Voltaire claimed that his cell provided him with some alone time to reflect and he spent 11 months in prison before being released. In April 1726, he was imprisoned for plotting to duel an aristocrat who had insulted and assaulted him, and he spent another brief period in the Bastille.

Youth and Heritage Life

Voltaire belonged to a middle-class family. He was born on November 21, 1694, according to his birth certificate, but the possibility that his birth was kept hidden cannot be ignored because he said on numerous occasions that it actually happened on February 20. At an early age, he thought he was the son of an officer called Rochebrune, who also happened to be a composer. Neither his supposed father, François Arouet, a former notary who subsequently became receiver at the Cour des Comptes (audit office), nor his older brother Armand was loved by him.

He became close to his godfather, the abbé de Châteauneuf, a freethinker and epicurean who gave the kid to Ninon de Lenclos, a famous courtesan in her 84th year. His bourgeois upbringing undoubtedly contributed to his optimistic attitude and sense of reality. He studied in the Jesuit college of Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he developed an appreciation for literature, theatre, and social life. While he valued the classical taste established in him by the institution, the religious instruction of the fathers simply added to his cynicism and contempt.

After graduating from college, Voltaire opted not to pursue a career in law. He fell in love with the daughter of an adventurer while working as a secretary at the French embassy in The Hague. The French embassy, fearful of controversy, sent him back to Paris. He intended to devote himself entirely to writing, despite his father's desires, and he attended the Temple, which was then the epicentre of freethinking society. Voltaire became the wit of Parisian society after Louis XIV's death, during the morally loosened Regency, and his epigrams were often cited.

Voltaire worked on an epic poem on Henry IV, the king who was revered by the French people for putting a stop to religious strife. The tedious copy of Virgil's Aeneid marred this Henriade, but his contemporaries recognized only the great ideal of tolerance that inspired the poem.

An Extraordinary Writer

Voltaire worked on almost 50 plays, as well as dozens of treatises on science, politics, and philosophy, as well as many historical works on topics ranging from the Russian Empire to the French Parliament. Along the way, he managed to cram in a massive quantity of poetry and a massive number of communications, totalling over 20,000 letters to friends and colleagues.

Voltaire is said to have kept up his prolific output by writing or dictating to secretaries for up to 18 hours a day, often while still in bed. He may possibly have been driven by superhuman amounts of caffeine—some reports claim he drank up to 40 cups each day. Voltaire's version of Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus, originally performed in 1718, is one of his most well-known works. Voltaire then went on to write a series of tragicomedies, notably Mariamne (1724). Zare (1732), a poem was written in verse, marked a break from his earlier works. Voltaire’s writings include the historical books The Age of Louis XIV (1751) and Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations, as well as other works (1756). Voltaire used a novel technique to chart the evolution of world civilization in the future, emphasizing social history and the arts.

Voltaire Beliefs

Voltaire took inspiration from Enlightenment intellectuals such as Isaac Newton, John Locke, and Francis Bacon's goals of a free and liberal society, as well as freedom of religion and free commerce. Voltaire beliefs Involved, like other Enlightenment philosophers of the time, were a deist — not by religion, but by reason, according to him. Even though he could be harshly critical of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, he favoured religious tolerance. Voltaire lauded Hinduism as a vegetarian and animal rights champion, noting that Hindus were "a gentle and innocent people, equally incapable of harming others or protecting themselves."

Voltaire Death

Voltaire died in the year 1778 in Paris, barely months after returning for the first time in 28 years to supervise the performance of one of his plays. Voltaire was visited by Catholic Church officials several times in the final days of his life. The great writer was unaffected, and it is said that he said to the priests, "Let me die in peace." His denial resulted in him being legally refused Christian burial, but his friends and family were able to organize a covert burial in the Champagne area of France before the decision was made public.

Who was Voltaire?

Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher, poet, playwright, historian, and polemicist. His literary productivity is only matched by its quantity: the publication of his complete works, which is approaching completion, will contain almost 200 volumes. His fame as a poet and playwright had grown to the point that he decided to visit England to supervise the publication of the final version of La Henriade. His trip to London was prompted by an embarrassing quarrel with an aristocracy, who had him briefly imprisoned in the Bastille.

For insulting the duc d'Orleans, Voltaire was banished to Tulle in 1716. He returned to Paris in 1717, only to be caught and imprisoned for a year at the Bastille on allegations of writing defamatory poetry. In 1726, Voltaire was transported back to the Bastille after a dispute with the Chevalier de Rohan. He was only held for a short period before being deported to England, where he spent over three years.

Voltaire's Letters on the English (1733), which enraged the French church and government, forced him to escape to safer pastures. He spent the following 15 years at Cirey-sur-Blaise with his lover, Émilie du Châtelet, at her husband's home. Voltaire's single greatest success was assisting in the introduction of Newton and Locke's ideas to France in the 1730s (and so to the rest of the Continent). As Jonathan Israel has demonstrated, this achievement was far from radical: the English philosophers in issue basically acted as a deistic bulwark against more radical (atheistic) currents of thought.

Voltaire is considered the finest stylist of the French language because of his sarcastic, fast-paced, and deceptively simple style. Voltaire enjoyed acting in his own plays throughout his life, and his passion for role-playing was evident in all of his writings. Over the course of his career, he utilized over 175 distinct pseudonyms, and his writing is marked by a profusion of diverse personalities.

Most of Voltaire's biography books, a footnote that contradicts the text, or one voice in the text arguing against another, continually draws the reader into the conversation. The employment of the mask is so ubiquitous, as is the presence of humour, irony, and satire, that the reader loses track of where the "real" Voltaire is. Voltaire was also contemporary in the manner he created a public image for himself by using his new name. As the patriarch of Ferney, he established himself as a cultural institution with a reputation that spanned Europe.