The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

In this study, Merle L. Perkins links individual freedom with national power in offering a close reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's major texts. He sees in Rousseau's thought an extreme tension and interdependence between the idiosyncrasy of nonconforming character and an almost obsessive concern with the external pressures operating on the state.