With its tales of illegitimacy, prison, stardom, exile, love affairs, and tireless battles against his critics, priests and king, Roger Pearson's "Voltaire Almighty" brings the father of Enlightenment to vivid life.<BR>" "<BR>"Voltaire Almighty "provides a lively look at the life and thought of one of the major forces behind European Enlightenment. A rebel from start to finish (1694-1778), Voltaire was an ailing and unwanted bastard child who refused to die; and when he did consent to expire some eighty-four years later, he secured a Christian burial despite a bishop's ban. <BR>During much of his life Voltaire was the toast of society for his plays and verse, but his barbed wit and commitment to human reason got him into trouble. Jailed twice and eventually banished by the king, he was an outspoken critic of religious intolerance and persecution. His personal life was as colorful as his intellectual life. Of independent means and mind, Voltaire never married, but he had long-term affairs with two women: Emilie, who died after giving birth to the child of another lover, and his niece, Marie-Louise, with whom he spent the last twenty-five years of his life. The consummate outsider; a dissenter who craved acceptance while flamboyantly disdaining it; author of countless stories, poems, books, plays, treatises, and tracts as well as some twenty thousand letters to his friends: Voltaire lived a long, active life that makes for engaging and entertaining reading.<BR>

"This new biography's title seems to deify one of the leaders of the French Enlightenment, whose writings espoused reason and the dignity of man. But while Pearson, a professor of French at Oxford, speaks loftily of Voltaire (1694 — 1778) as a hero, his book offers a grounded portrait of his long and often troubled life. Born Franois-Marie Arouet, he was imprisoned early on for his heretical writings and was exiled from Paris for 25 years. His work wasn't truly respected until he was past 80 and near death; it was then that statues of him were erected and he became godlike. Voltaire's plays caused a furor because they satirized the Catholic Church and the royal family, against whose repressive rule Voltaire revolted in his writings and through his financial support of victims of the repression. His business fortune also went to the two women in his life, the Marquise du Chtelet, a mathematician and his longtime mistress, and his niece (and also his mistress), Marie-Louise Denis. Yet the author of Candide and major works of philosophy seems to have had less interest in the physicality of love than in the emotion, and this book illuminates the man as he struggled to support freedom in a repressive world." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

In this lively biography, Pearson (French, U. of Oxford) matches in tone and spirit the raucous life of his subject. Pearson details Voltaire's humble beginnings, his relentless self-promotion, his advocacy for human rights, and the vacillation of his popularity at court. The color plates of paintings of Voltaire and his contemporaries contribute to Pearson's success in placing Voltaire in the context of 18th-century Europe. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)