A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary

Description

Voltaire's Pocket Philosophical Dictionary is a major work of the European Enlightenment. It consists of a series of short essays, arranged alphabetically, whose unifying thread is an attack on religious and political intolerance. Highly entertaining, its concern with intolerance and its consequences is still relevant today.

• One of the landmarks of European Enlightenment thought, Voltaire's Pocket Philosophical Dictionary is concerned primarily with religious dogma and intolerance and remains highly relevant today.
• This is the only available English translation of Voltaire's original Pocket Philosophical Dictionary of 1764, expanded in successive editions until it became less coherent, and the edition that provoked widespread condemnation and controversy.
• The only translation based on the definitive French critical edition.
• The new translation by John Fletcher is readable and accurate and is accompanied by a contextualizing introduction by Nicholas Cronk that considers France and Europe in the 1760s, the nature of Voltaire's engagement in political debate, literary style, contemporary reaction, the lasting impact of the work and its continuing relevance to debates on religious intolerance.
• Includes up-to-date bibliography and full notes.

About the Author(s)

Voltaire

John Fletcher, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Kent, and Nicholas Cronk, Professor of French Literature and Director of the Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford

Reviews

"a marvellously Swiftian look at the bleakness of existence." - Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

"In John Fletcher's wonderfully luminous translation, the Dictionnaire philosophique portatif is like a breath of fresh air... Nicholas Cronk's discreet, helpful introduction and notes direct us to Voltaire's main concern: religion." - David Coward, Times Literary Supplement