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” (http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/news/blog/how-tell-king-he-writes-bad-verse).

Stephen Ashworth
Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford, UK