Complete Works of Voltaire 81-82

Theodore Besterman’s edition of the notebooks Voltaire kept throughout his long life show not only the staggering breadth of his interests, but the wide reading, inquiry and curiosity which Voltaire made a record of day by day. In their casual, careless nature lies the great value of these notebooks, bringing before us the living, authentic Voltaire. This edition aims to give the reader as near a sense of the original as is typographically practicable, while improving the readability of the text, in order to depict as closely as possible the source and development of Voltaire’s thought.