This volume brings together a group of works which have never been edited before, and makes an important contribution to the study of Voltaire and music history. Voltaire's role as a courtier during this period was a complex one, as he sought to serve at both the French and Prussian courts; the names of the addressees of the verse written at this time show the numerous contacts made by Voltaire during his travels abroad and particularly during his postings to Berlin and the Hague. On his return to France in 1743, his attention turned to the court at Versailles, and there followed two royal commissions, "La Princesse de Navarre" and "Le Temple de la gloire", both written in collaboration with Rameau with whom Voltaire had a stormy working relationship. Although neither work received the critical acclaim Voltaire had hoped for, the first did secure for him the position of historiographe du roi and is integral to his ongoing experimentation in comic drama.

When Rameau took the world of opera by storm in 1733, Voltaire set aside his first libretto, "Tanis et Zelide", and wrote "Samson" and later "Pandore" with the composer specifically in mind. All three libretti depict rebellion against established religions, culminating in spectacular scenes: Isis and Osiris destroying the temple at Memphis; Samson bringing down the temple, crushing himself and the Philistines; and Prometheus and the Titans doing battle against the Roman gods.

The comedy "L'Envieux" is a thinly veiled allegory of the Cirey household and of Desfontaines's underhand manoeuvres against it. With the publication of Desfontaines's "Voltairomanie" in December 1738, Voltaire had to abandon the idea of having the play performed. Instead he set to work on a tragedy, "Zulime", the story of a princess in love with a slave who is already married. Even though the play was not the hoped-for success that would silence his detractors, Voltaire continued to revise it and to have it privately performed for many years. Meanwhile the printer Ledet was publishing an edition of Voltaire's works, surreptitiously including the banned "Lettres philosophiques". Voltaire's "Memoire" on the edition serves the double function of pointing out all that is new as well as the printer's many errors. The "Epitre a un ministre d'Etat" is another text that underwent significant revisions over the years. Originally addressed to Maurepas - perhaps in gratitude for his help in the Desfontaines affair - the epistle seems also to have been intended for Frederick. As Voltaire's relationship with both men deteriorated, so the poem was transformed from a tribute to patronage to a lament on the plight of the arts.

At the beginning of 1736, Voltaire was at the height of his success, receiving praise from the public and fellow-poets alike. The breathtaking breadth of Voltaire's activity this year ranges from comedy, "L'Enfant Prodigue", and a major philosophical poem, "Le Mondain", to public and private verse, including one of his most arresting satires in "Le Crepinade", aimed at Jean-Baptiste Rousseau. Voltaire relished the diversity of his literary output, as he did the stimulation of his burgeoning scientific interests and lively correspondence. However, despite the popular acclaim, literary quarrels and lawsuits caused continuous tension, forcing Voltaire by the end of the year, to flee France and the 'persecution' his fame had brought him.

This volume presents all of Voltaire's poetry for which a year of composition is unknown. It is composed exclusively of short pieces which provide an opportunity to study the place of shorter verse in Voltaire's corpus. Voltaire's impromptus, odes and epistles were often penned on specific occasions and given as gifts to friends and acquaintances, some well known, like Madame du Chatelet, others much more mysterious. As the author's reputation grew these short pieces became sought-after commodities: people would save them, and some would be copied and circulated to the wider public.

No two comedies of Voltaire are alike: the breadth and diversity of his comic dramaturgy in terms of form, technique, theme, characterisation and tone, are revealed in this first critical analysis and systematic reassessment of Voltaire's eighteen comedies in their contemporary theatrical, literary and intellectual contexts. This study also exposes the fundamental unity of Voltaire's comic theatre, which lies in the plays' status as innovative, experimental works written in creative dialogue with, and fruitful opposition to, the contemporary trend towards serious, sentimental comedy. Voltaire wrote his comedies over more than forty years (1725-1769), when comedy was undergoing significant redefinition as a genre. Typically dismissed as un-dramatic, sentimental, overtly didactic and so of limited interest today, his comedies emerge from this study as a series of vigorous explorations in the many possibilities of the comic genre. Voltaire wrote with the example of Moliere and the seventeenth-century comic tradition constantly in mind, but at the same time he diverged from that tradition in pioneering ways, constantly testing the limits of generic convention and audience expectation. In demonstrating the blend of tradition and innovation at the heart of Voltaire's aesthetics of comic drama, this book contributes to a remapping of the history of eighteenth-century French comedy. It also leads to a new understanding of Voltaire's comic aesthetics more broadly: his comedies are a substantial, complex and vital part of his literary career, and studying them helps us to revise our view of the author of satirical contes, the dry wit whose distinctive literary mode can appear to be destructive irony. Viewed in the light of his comic theatre, the familiar Voltaire wears a significantly different expression.

'You can leave a forest, but you can never leave a cloister; you are free in the forest, but you are a slave in the cloister.' Diderot's The Nun (La Religieuse) is the seemingly true story of a young girl forced by her parents to enter a convent and take holy orders. A novel mingling mysticism, madness, sadistic cruelty and nascent sexuality, it gives a scathing insight into the effects of forced vocations and the unnatural life of the convent. A succes de scandale at the end of the eighteenth century, it has attracted and unsettled readers ever since. For Diderot's novel is not simply a story of a young girl with a bad habit; it is also a powerfully emblematic fable about oppression and intolerance. This new translation includes Diderot's all-important prefatory material, which he placed, disconcertingly, at the end of the novel, and which turns what otherwise seems like an exercise in realism into what is now regarded as a masterpiece of proto-modernist fiction. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Bringing together leading scholars from the USA, UK and Europe, this is the first substantial study of the seminal influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on British Romanticism. Reconsidering Rousseau's connection to canonical Romantic authors such as Wordsworth, Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism also explores his impact on a wide range of literature, including anti-Jacobin fiction, educational works, familiar essays, nature writing and political discourse. Convincingly demonstrating that the relationship between Rousseau's thought and British Romanticism goes beyond mere reception or influence to encompass complex forms of connection, transmission and appropriation, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism is a vital new contribution to scholarly understanding of British Romantic literature and its transnational contexts.

Cross-dressing author, envoy, soldier and spy Charles d'Eon de Beaumont's unusual career fascinated his contemporaries and continues to attract historians, novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, image makers, cultural theorists and those concerned with manifestations of the extraordinary. D'Eon's significance as a historical figure was already being debated more than 45 years before his death.

Not surprisingly, such sensational material has attracted the attention of enthusiasts, scholars and literateurs to 'the strange case of the chevalier d'Eon'. He has also attracted the attention of psychologists and sexologists, and for most of the last century his gender transformation has been viewed through a Freudian lens. His cross-dressing, it was usually assumed, must have a psychosexual explanation. Until the second half of the twentieth century the terms 'Eonist' and 'Eonism' were the standard English words for transvestites and transvestism respectively, but 'Eonism' was also, thanks to Havelock Ellis, widely regarded as a psychological condition or compulsion. However, in the mid-twentieth century, new ideas about gender-identity disorders led to d'Eon being redefined not as a transvestite, but a transsexual - a person who considers their sex to have been 'misassigned'.

The essays in this collection contribute to d'Eon's rehabilitation as a figure worthy of scholarly attention and display a variety of disciplinary approaches. Drawing on new research into d'Eon's life, this volume offers original and nuanced readings of how a gender identity could come to be negotiated over time.

'These hours of solitude and meditation are the only time of the day when I am completely myself' Reveries of the Solitary Walker is Rousseau's last great work, the product of his final years of exile from the society that condemned his political and religious views. Returning to Paris the philosopher determines to keep a faithful record of the thoughts and ideas that come to him on his perambulations. Part reminiscence, part reflection, enlivened by anecdote and encounters, the Reveries form a kind of sequel to his Confessions, but they are more introspective and less defensive: Rousseau finds happiness in solitude, walks in nature, botanizing, and meditation. Writing an account of his walks becomes a means of achieving self-knowledge and safeguarding for himself the pleasure that others, he is convinced, seek to deny him. The Reveries, shaped by the unmediated nature of Rousseau's thought processes, give powerfully lyrical expression to a painfully tortured soul in search of peace. This new translation is accompanied by an introduction and notes that explore the nature of the work and its historical, literary, and intellectual contexts. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Bringing together leading scholars from the USA, UK and Europe, this is the first substantial study of the seminal influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau on British Romanticism. Reconsidering Rousseau's connection to canonical Romantic authors such as Wordsworth, Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism also explores his impact on a wide range of literature, including anti-Jacobin fiction, educational works, familiar essays, nature writing and political discourse. Convincingly demonstrating that the relationship between Rousseau's thought and British Romanticism goes beyond mere reception or influence to encompass complex forms of connection, transmission and appropriation, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and British Romanticism is a vital new contribution to scholarly understanding of British Romantic literature and its transnational contexts.