François-Marie Arouet, writing under the pseudonym Voltaire, was born in 1694 into a Parisian bourgeois family. Educated by Jesuits, he was an excellent pupil but one quickly enraged by dogma. An early rift with his father—who wished him to study law—led to his choice of letters as a career. Insinuating himself into court circles, he became notorious for lampoons on leading notables and was twice imprisoned in the Bastille.

By his mid-thirties his literary activities precipitated a four-year exile in England where he won the praise of Swift and Pope for his political tracts. His publication, three years later in France, of Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais (1733)—an attack on French Church and State—forced him to flee again. For twenty years Voltaire lived chiefly away from Paris. In this, his most prolific period, he wrote such satirical tales as “Zadig” (1747) and “Candide” (1759). His old age at Ferney, outside Geneva, was made bright by his adopted daughter, “Belle et Bonne,” and marked by his intercessions in behalf of victims of political injustice. Sharp-witted and lean in his white wig, impatient with all appropriate rituals, he died in Paris in 1778—the foremost French author of his day.

Zadig

Imprimatur
Epistle Dedicatory from Sadi to the Sultana Sheraa
1. Blind in One Eye
2. The Nose
3. The Dog and the Horse
4. Green Eyes
5. The Contest in Generosity
6. The Minister
7. Disputes and Audiences
8. Jealousy
9. The Beaten Woman
10. Slavery
11. The Funeral Pyre
12. The Supper Party
13. The Assignations
14. The Brigand
15. The Fisherman
16. The Cockatrice
17. The Tournament
18. The Hermit
19. The Riddles

L'Engénu
(The Child of Nature)

1. How the Prior of Our Lady of the Mountain and his sister met a Huron Indian
2. The Child of Nature is recognized by his relatives
3. The conversion of the Child of Nature
4. The Child of Nature baptized
5. The Child of Nature in love
6. The Child of Nature rushes to his mistress and becomes enraged.
7. The Child of Nature repels the English
8. The Child of Nature goes to Court and on the way has supper with some Huguenots
9. The arrival of the Child of Nature at Versailles, and his reception at Court
10. The Child of Nature imprisoned in the Bastille with a Jansenist
11. The Child of Nature develops his talents
12. The Child of Nature's opinions on plays
13. The lovely St Yves goes to Versailles
14. The Child of Nature's intellectual progress
15. The lovely St Yves resists certain delicate propositions
16. She consults a Jesuit
17. Her virtue her downfall
18. She delivers her lover and a Jansenist
19. The Child of Nature, the lovely St Yves, and their relatives are reunited
20. The death of the lovely St Yves, and its consequences