Just published: Voltaire, Notes et écrits marginaux conservés hors de la Bibliothèque nationale de Russie
Complete works of Voltaire,
vol.145
Complément au
Corpus des notes marginales de Voltaire
Sous la direction de
Gillian Pink
Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 2019
ISBN 978-0-7294-0890-5
This volume
is a complement to the Corpus
des notes marginales subseries,
reproducing marginal notes by Voltaire found in works outside of his
personal library in both printed books and manuscripts. Some of the
texts were annotated by Voltaire not for his own use but for friends,
acquaintances and correspondents. The volume, with
its 29 illustrations, therefore offers a rare glimpse of marginalia
that was intended to help his contemporaries to improve their own
writing, but also to impress a certain image of Voltaire himself upon
the recipients of the annotated works. A general introduction
to the series provides a fascinating portrait of Voltaire as a reader
and explains the particular questions raised by the contents of this
volume. The Appendix includes texts of uncertain authorship.
The publication of this volume marks the completion of the
Corpus series, which makes available for the first time a
comprehensive collection of Voltaire’s known marginal notes in books
within his personal library and beyond.
Blog post:
How to tell a king he writes bad verse.
The bibliographic information of the complete 10-volume
Corpus is as follows:
1-9.
A-Z; et Notes et écrits marginaux conservés hors de la Bibliothèque nationale de Russie, ISBN
978-0-7294-1214-8, 10 vol. (OCV, t.136-45), 2008-2019, hb
Stephen Ashworth
Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, UK