Candide

Voltaire was born François-Marie Arouet in Paris on November 21, 1694. His father was a solicitor, and his mother was of noble birth, but died early. On the advice of a friend, his father sent him to a Jesuit college when Voltaire was ten. By the time he left the college, Voltaire had decided that he wanted to be a writer – against his father’s wishes, who sent him to Caen to study law. However, Voltaire continued to write and published his first work, the tragedy Oedipe, in 1718. Voltaire became involved in Parisian high society, where his dark humor and knack for mocking authority eventually got him into trouble. He was sentenced to prison twice. In 1718, after his 11-month imprisonment in the Bastille, Voltaire adopted his nom de plume. In 1726, he found himself again in the Bastille after an altercation with the French nobleman Chevalier de Rohan. He managed to cut short his imprisonment by agreeing to an exile to England, where he soon joined high society. He returned to France in 1728 and caused renewed uproar with the publication of his Lettres philosophiques, in which he wrote about his views of the British government, literature, science and religion – views he considered superior to those of the French. The Lettres were publicly banned and burned, and Voltaire fled to the Château de Cirey in Lothringia. A decade later though, Voltaire was back in favor. Thanks to the recommendations of the Marquise de Pompadour, he became Louis XV’s chamberlain in 1746. In 1749, he responded to an invitation from Prussia’s King Friedrich II. However, the posting didn’t last long – again, due to various altercations – and in 1758, Voltaire bought Ferney, a manor house close to Geneva, where he lived and wrote for 20 years. He died on May 30, 1778 in Paris.