Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet was born in Paris in 1694, the son of a notary, and was educated by the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand. Verses mocking the regent led to eleven months in the Bastille in 1717–1718, and soon afterward his tragedy Oedipus made him famous under the pen name Voltaire. After a quarrel with a nobleman he was imprisoned again and went to England from 1726 to 1728, where he admired Locke, Newton and English religious toleration; his Philosophical Letters on the English (1734) were condemned in France. He lived for years at Cirey with the scientist Émilie du Châtelet, spent 1750–1753 at the court of Frederick the Great in Prussia, and settled near Geneva and then at Ferney. His many works include histories such as The Age of Louis XIV, the satirical tale Candide (1759), the Treatise on Tolerance (1763), written after the execution of Jean Calas, and the Philosophical Dictionary (1764). He returned to Paris in triumph in 1778 and died there that May.

Voltaire is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: A champion of religious toleration who defended the persecuted Protestant Jean Calas. Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy