This volume features the correspondence of French 18th-century writer, Mme de Graffigny, from April 1749 - July 1750.

The first two volumes of the Correspondance generale d'Helvetius inspired international acclaim. Now the third volume offers us further insight into a variety of aspects of life in eighteenth-century France. Claude-Adrian Helvetius (1715-71) was a wealthy and high-ranking member of French society. He was acquainted with the leading political and social figures of his time and, through family, with the court and government which he occasionally served in a diplomatic capacity. Philosopher, encyclopedist, and author of the explosive De l'Esprit, he and his wife, Anne Catherine de Ligneville, corresponded with the great and influential throughout Europe. The letters in this volume were written between 1761 and 1774, a period in which Helvetius enjoyed the fruits of his fame, travelled to England (1764) and Prussia (1765), and produced two books, Le Bonheur and De l'homme, which were published after his death.

This is the fourth of five volumes of the letters of the French philosopher Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771), author of the controversial De l'Esprit (1758). Featuring the correspondence of Mme Helvetius, nee Anne Catherine de Ligniville (1722-1800), in the years following her husband's death, this volume also includes letters by and to Helvetius discovered since the publication of the first three volumes. Mme Helvetius enjoyed an active widowhood, welcoming to her salon in Auteuil a group of intellectuals who came to be known as the Ideologues. A close friend of Benjamin Franklin, she was involved in political events before and during the French Revolution, as well as in Napoleon's coup d'etat. In the last letter of the series her grandson describes her burial in her garden, which took place without religious or revolutionary ceremony in the presence of all her favourite pets. Most of the newly discovered letters are addressed to Helvetius by figures as important as d'Alembert, Boulanger, Chastellux, Saint-Lambert, Servan, Thieriot, and Trublet. Some of these complete an existing exchange, others provide dates for letters already published. The fifth and final volume will be devoted primarily to a comprehensive index. It will also include a chronological list of all the letters, corrections and modifications, and other useful material.

This fifth and final volume completes the critical edition of the letters of French philosopher Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771), author of the controversial De l'Esprit (1758), and of his wife, nee Anne Catherine de Ligniville (1722-1800), who ran her own salon in Auteuil after her husband's death. The essential component in this last volume is the detailed index - an indispensable instrument for researchers who wish to make full use of the correspondence. The volume also includes four new letters discovered since the appearance of the first four volumes, errata, additions and modifications to the critical apparatus, the text of letters excluded from the edition proper, genealogies of the families of Helvetius and his wife, and a chronological list of all letters mentioned in the edition. The previous volumes of this edition have enjoyed international acclaim. "All students of the French Enlightenment will be deeply indebted to D.W. Smith and his team for this superbly conceived and organized collaborative achievement. When complete the Toronto Helvetius will rank among the truly outstanding examples of twentieth-century editorial and bibliographical scholarship." (David Williams, French Studies)