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.

Written substantially in the late 1740s and published between 1747 and 1749, the three contes which are collected in this volume are among the best known of Voltaire's works. They were composed at a time when Voltaire had abandoned the tranquillity of Cirey for the tumult of Paris and Versailles, and was enjoying new recognition from members of the court and the learned societies. The three contes in the present volume, "Zadig", "Memnon" and "Le Monde comme il va", mark a new departure for Voltaire. They are the first of his fictional writings to be composed especially for the general reading public. Secure in his official prestige by the late 1740s, Voltaire felt free to publish these fictional experiments which adapt the popular mode of oriental fiction, parodying and pastiching the works of other writers - while at the same time offering serious criticisms of French society and his reflections on the nature of human happiness and the problem of evil.

This collection of essays focuses primarily on the narrative voice in French fiction from the mid-19th century to the present, from Balzac through Zola and Proust to the "nouveau roman".