Letters Concerning the English Nation.

London: Printed for C. Davis and A. Lyon,, 1733. The work that would "shape the French Enlightenment and French Anglophile tendencies for the next half-century" First edition in any language of Voltaire's incisive study of the English nation, one of the central texts of the Enlightenment and among his most famous and widely read works. Voltaire's great admiration for the nation and people of England was developed during his exile in the country in the 1720s. He was particularly impressed by the empiricist philosophy of Bacon, Locke and Newton, by the toleration afforded the Quakers, and by the mixed system of government left by the Glorious Revolution. The Letters consequently examine the literary, learned, political and religious life of England - all while drawing witty and subversive comparisons with the customs of Voltaire's native France. He was at least partially successful in his efforts to prompt a critical reassessment of French society: the Letters's depiction of England "would shape the French Enlightenment and French Anglophile tendencies for the next half-century" (ODNB). The work's enthusiastic discussions of Bacon, Locke and Newton equally helped to bring these individuals, with their empirical methods, into the French public eye, where they were a major influence on the Enlightenment's moderate, non-Rousseau wing. The English translation was done by John Lockman, among the leading translators of the age. Lockman also published the first English translations of Voltaire's Henriade and his Siècle de Louis XIV. The French edition of the Letters was printed in Amsterdam the following year. A scarcer issue of the first English edition, with two final advertisement leaves, is also known, without priority. Octavo (197 x 128 mm). Recent quarter calf, spine ruled in blind, brown morocco label, marbled paper sides, red sprinkled edges. Light rubbing and bumping to extremities, slight browning to endpapers and outer leaves, minor damp stain to head of initial leaves, sporadic light foxing to contents, otherwise fresh: a very good copy. ESTC T137614; Sabin 100751.