Volume 2, Number 5 · April 16, 1964
Voltaire
By Peter Gay
Select Letters of Voltaire
translated and edited by Theodore Besterman
Nelson, 180 pp., $6.50
The eighteenth century was a century of great letter writers, and Voltaire was the greatest of them all. He was also one of the most prolific. As Theodore Besterman reminds us in his Introduction to his selection from Voltaire's vast correspondence, Voltaire wrote at least twenty thousand letters in his long life, to more than 1200 correspondents. He wrote to everybody, and everybody wrote to him—kings and actresses, government officials and bankers, philosophers and litterateurs, and (most attractive of all) obscure personages who were his friends. 'The remarkable thing is,' Besterman notes, and it is remarkable, 'that Voltaire corresponded regularly for twenty years or more with about thirty-five friends, and for over thirty years with twenty, outside his family.' Voltaire, contrary to his reputation, was not merely a social climber, or solely concerned for his security or financial advantage. He was a good hater but he also loved widely and generously, if not always wisely, and most of his traits emerge in the letters here brought together.
Review, 1601 words
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