Voltaire in Holland 1736-1745

Présentation

This book portrays Voltaire as he was perceived by readers of gazettes and literary journals published in Holland. Among them the literary critic Prosper Marchand, who was allergic to the many factual errors in Voltaire’s works, and Henri Du Sauzet, publisher of the Bibliothèque françoise. Also Jean Rousset de Missy, who in 1736 sided with Jean-Baptiste Rousseau in his controversy with Voltaire, and who in his journals Le Magazin and L’Épilogueur often attacked Voltaire : an arrogant little creature, always out to cheat his publishers.
We provide a day-by-day chronology of Voltaire’s visits to Holland, and illustrate these with a large number of as yet unpublished comments. Thus Henri Du Sauzet tells a correspondent about his problems with Voltaire over Histoire du siècle de Louis XIV, while at the same time his Amsterdam colleague Etienne Ledet clashes with Voltaire over Eléments de la philosophie de Newton and Œuvres de M. de Voltaire. Diplomats reported in detail on Voltaire’s dealings with Johannes van Duren over the Anti-Machiavel, and on his unsuccessful diplomatic mission to Berlin in 1743. We include an unknown version of Voltaire’s Sur un usage très utile établi en Hollande, and discuss at some length his Sommaire des droits de Sa Majesté le roi de Prusse sur Herstal, first printed as a pamphlet in The Hague, and published in the Leydse Courant before it appeared in the Gazette d’Amsterdam, the Gazette de Leyde and the Gazette d’Utrecht.