Voltaire Foundation, Oxford

Change of venue! This Saturday!

The opera will now take place at the Royal Academy of Music. The time remains the same.

Opera: Catherine, ou La belle fermière Immensely popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Catherine, ou La belle fermière is a comic French opera that tells a tale of mistaken identity. The beautiful farmer, Catherine…

On our own behalf, some exciting news!

Professor Thomas Wynn appointed as next Director of the Voltaire Foundation

Professor Thomas Wynn appointed as next Director of the Voltaire Foundation The Voltaire Foundation is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Thomas Wynn as Director, from 1 October 2026. Professor Wynn is currently Professor of French in the School of Modern…

Witnessing Enlightenment in Action

Lausanne Grand Hôpital. Photo Wikimedia Commons, 2011. In January 1782 the Lausanne Literary Society (Société littéraire de Lausanne) convened a meeting to discuss its purpose and organisation. The institution had been reactivated almost two years earlier, following a first phase in the early 1770s, and attendance was starting to dwindle. Its members gathered at their informal headquarters – a bright, stove-heated, pine-panelled room on the second floor of the local…...

Witnessing Enlightenment in Action Lausanne Grand Hôpital. Photo Wikimedia Commons, 2011. In January 1782 the Lausanne Literary Society (Société littéraire de Lausanne) convened a meeting to discuss its purpose and organisation. The…

From OCV to OV: Announcing the publication of Digital Scholarly Editing in Practice: Making Oxford University Voltaire

Scholarly editions have long been central to humanist study, and print editions continue to be produced according to well-established methodologies. In recent decades, digital scholarly editions have gained increasing prominence: some publishers have digitised existing print editions, a notable example being OUP’s Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO); other publishers have created born-digital resources. The shift from print to digital requires not only new editorial approaches but also sustained attention to questions of technical and financial sustainability – concerns that are especially relevant in the case of resources of reference....

From OCV to OV: Announcing the publication of Digital Scholarly Editing in Practice: Making Oxford University Voltaire Scholarly editions have long been central to humanist study, and print editions continue to be produced according to well-established methodologies. In recent decades, digital scholarly editions ha…

Reconstruire l’atelier de Voltaire

Il m’arrive parfois d’oublier que Voltaire est mort. C’est le résultat de la fréquentation quasi-quotidienne, depuis une vingtaine d’années, de ses papiers, de ses brouillons, et de sa correspondance pétillante de vie. Parfois, pendant quelques secondes, l'envie me prend de lui poser une question concernant les événements de l’époque, la paternité d’un ouvrage, la destinée ou la finalité qu’il envisageait pour un texte....

Reconstruire l’atelier de Voltaire Il m’arrive parfois d’oublier que Voltaire est mort. C’est le résultat de la fréquentation quasi-quotidienne, depuis une vingtaine d’années, de ses papiers, de ses brouillons, et de sa correspondan…

Voltaire in the Baltic World

Last month the Voltaire Foundation partnered with the University of Tartu’s Museum of Art for a conference in Tartu, Estonia, dedicated to Voltaire and the influence of the French Enlightenment in the Baltic region. Scholars joined from Tallinn and Tartu and from further afield, Vilnius, Riga, France, and the UK to explore Voltaire’s influence through intellectual history, literary studies, philosophy, and history of art, spanning the 18th-20th centuries....

Voltaire in the Baltic World Last month the Voltaire Foundation partnered with the University of Tartu’s Museum of Art for a conference in Tartu, Estonia, dedicated to Voltaire and the influence of the French Enlightenment in …

The Republic of Letters under the microscope

Peter J. Koehler’s The Life of Philippe Fermin: Nature, Medicine and Law in Suriname and the Netherlands, recently published in the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, brings into focus a figure long neglected by historians of medicine and the Republic of Letters. The book reconstructs Fermin’s life and career across Europe and Suriname, from his surgical training in Berlin, Suffolk and Amsterdam to his involvement with slavery, scientific societies and the Republic of Letters....

The Republic of Letters under the microscope Peter J. Koehler’s The Life of Philippe Fermin: Nature, Medicine and Law in Suriname and the Netherlands, recently published in the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment ser…

Enlightenment Intimations of Mortality

Vladimir Borovikovsky, Portrait of Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin, 1811, National Pushkin Museum. The first canonical genius of Russian poetry was Gavriila Derzhavin (1743-1816), who lived long enough to meet the young Alexander Pushkin and acknowledge his budding genius. Little translated into foreign languages, Derzhavin, who served in the government of Catherine the Great, was a philosophical poet whose lyric poems range across theological, metaphysical, and scientific questions....

Enlightenment Intimations of Mortality Vladimir Borovikovsky, Portrait of Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin, 1811, National Pushkin Museum. The first canonical genius of Russian poetry was Gavriila Derzhavin (1743-1816), who lived long enoug…

The Un-Naming of ‘Zamore’ and ‘Mirza’

A ‘name is an infinite source of control’ (George Lamming, ‘The Negro Writer and his World’, 1956). While personal to each human being, it also becomes a social designation of one’s identity. It is no surprise, then, that the routine practice of enslavers stripping enslaved people of their African or Indigenous names and renaming them with Christian, classical, or European names shapes much scholarship of the Atlantic slave trade (see, for example, Marylise Thill, …...

The Un-Naming of ‘Zamore’ and ‘Mirza’ A ‘name is an infinite source of control’ (George Lamming, ‘The Negro Writer and his World’, 1956). While personal to each human being, it also becomes a social designation of one’s identity. It is…

Taking Newton on Tour

Jonathan Richardson the Elder, Martin Folkes, 1718, oil on canvas, Burlington House, Society of Antiquaries. Courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries. In 2021 I wrote about a putative portrait of Voltaire by Hogarth for the Voltaire Foundation. Hogarth sketched a gentleman resembling Voltaire in a London coffeehouse with Martin Folkes (1690–1754), the antiquary, astronomer, and only simultaneous president of the Royal Society and Society of Antiquaries....

Taking Newton on Tour Jonathan Richardson the Elder, Martin Folkes, 1718, oil on canvas, Burlington House, Society of Antiquaries.  Courtesy of the Society of Antiquaries. In 2021 I wrote about a putative portrait …