Table of Contents

Des langues; Jusqu’à quel point on doit tromper le peuple; Les Deux Consolés; [Timon] Sur le paradoxe que les sciences ont nui aux mœurs; Des Juifs; Du siècle de Constantin, De Dioclétien, De Constantin, De Julien; Lettre sur le Dante; De la chimère du souverain bien; De la population d’Amérique; Histoire des voyages de Scarmentado; Des génies, De l’astrologie, De la magie, Des possédés; D’Ovide, De Socrate; Dialogues entre Lucrèce et Posidonius; [Notice autobiographique]; Préface des éditeurs, Lettre de M. de Voltaire aux éditeurs de la première édition de Genève; Appendice: Deux prospectus des Cramer; ’Vers au roi de Prusse’ (1756): supplement to the edition published in OCV, vol.45A; ’Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne’: addenda to the edition published in OCV, vol.45A

Reviews

French Studies: "Readers are undoubtedly familiar with the Voltaire Foundation’s ever-expanding critical edition of Voltaire’s collected works, which has changed the landscape of eighteenth-century scholarship. [...] Coming on the heels of Voltaire’s two great historical works, Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1751) and L’Histoire universelle (1753), this collection might give the impression of a writer capitalizing on his success by recycling unused work. Nicholas Cronk, however, makes a compelling case for considering the mélanges as a bona fide genre in which Voltaire exercised his taste for ‘de petits chapitres’, short variations on themes that enabled maximum flexibility in tone, approach, and subject matter. [...] ‘De petits chapitres’ these may be but, as this volume convincingly shows, Voltaire’s brevity — his conspicuous silence on certain issues as much as his polemics — set the agenda of international debate for much of the eighteenth century."