Voltaire in Love

Voltaire in Love

Summary

The meeting of Voltaire, successful financier, famous poet and troublemaker, and the enchanting amateur physicist and countess Émilie du Châtelet, was a meeting of both hearts and minds. In the Château de Cirey, the two brilliant intellects scandalised the French aristocracy with their passionate love affair and provoked revolutions both political and scientific with their groundbreaking work in literature, philosophy and physics.
Nancy Mitford's account of the love affair of the Enlightenment is, in the author's own words, 'a shriek from beginning to end'.

Reviews

  • Mitford writes with a profound sympathy for the 17th and 18th century, and Voltaire in Love caps her career as the nonpareil popular biographer of that era
    Washington Post

About the author

Nancy Mitford

Nancy Mitford (1904-1973) was born in London, the eldest child of the second Baron Redesdale. She had written four novels, including Wigs on the Green (1935), before the success of The Pursuit of Love in 1945, which she followed with Love in a Cold Climate (1949), The Blessing (1951) and Don't Tell Alfred (1960). She also wrote four works of biography. Nancy Mitford was awarded the CBE in 1972.
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