Voltaire Tee

Voltaire (1694–1778), born François-Marie Arouet, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher renowned for his wit, his advocacy of civil liberties, and his attacks on the established Catholic Church and French institutions. Over a prolific career spanning six decades, he produced works in nearly every literary form—plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works—totaling more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. His satirical novella Candide (1759), which mocked the philosophical optimism of Leibniz through the misadventures of its naive hero, remains one of the most widely read works of French literature. Voltaire was a fierce champion of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the separation of church and state. He used his sharp pen to challenge religious dogma, superstition, and judicial injustice, most notably in the Calas affair, where he campaigned to overturn the wrongful conviction and execution of a Protestant merchant. Twice imprisoned in the Bastille and exiled to England for three years, his Philosophical Letters on the English introduced French readers to the ideas of Locke and Newton and held up English society as a model of tolerance and intellectual freedom.