Public-domain ebook
by John Morley
Language: en3,629 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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In: Biographies·French Literature·History - European
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #14052.
John Morley’s two‑volume work is a scholarly biography that seeks to fill the gap left by earlier, fragmentary accounts of Jean‑Jacques Rousseau’s life. Opening with a candid assessment of existing French and English studies, Morley explains that his narrative will be more continuous than the scattered sketches of Voltaire, drawing on the twenty‑seven‑volume Auguis edition of Rousseau’s writings and the 1865 correspondence collection edited by Streckeisen‑Moultou. The introductory pages outline a detailed contents list, tracing Rousseau from his birth and early education through his itinerant youth, his relationships with Madame de Warens and Theresa Le Vasseur, and his later intellectual output, including the Discourse on Inequality and the Social Contract. The author’s preface emphasizes the work’s revisions and added footnotes, promising a more organized and engaging portrait than the “crude and formless” earlier efforts.
The text reflects a Victorian‑era scholarly voice, marked by exhaustive footnoting, formal diction, and a didactic tone that assumes a reader comfortable with dense historical analysis. Its style blends narrative biography with critical commentary, making it especially appealing to students of Enlightenment philosophy, historians of the French Revolution, and readers interested in the intricate personal and intellectual development of Rousseau. Those who appreciate meticulous source work and a measured, academic approach will find Morley’s biography a rewarding entry point into the life of this complex thinker.
The opening · free to read
VOL. I.
NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
This work differs from its companion volume in offering something more like a continuous personal history than was necessary in the case of such a man as Voltaire, the story of whose life may be found in more than one English book of repute. Of Rousseau there is, I believe, no full biographical account in our literature, and even France has nothing more complete under this head than Musset-Pathay's Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de J.J. Rousseau (1821). This, though a meritorious piece of labour, is extremely crude and formless in composition and arrangement, and the interpreting portions are devoid of interest.
The edition of Rousseau's works to which the references have been made is that by M. Auguis, in twenty-seven volumes, published in 1825 by Dalibon. In 1865 M. Streckeisen-Moultou published from the originals, which had been deposited in the library of Neuchâtel by Du Peyrou, the letters addressed to Rousseau by various correspondents. These two interesting volumes, which are entitled Rousseau, ses Amis et ses Ennemis, are mostly referred to under the name of their editor.
February, 1873.
The second edition in 1878 was revised; some portions were considerably shortened, and a few additional footnotes inserted. No further changes have been made in the present edition.
January, 1886.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
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