Voltaire and the Sirven affair (1762-1772)

Long overshadowed by the campaign to exonerate the memory of Calas, the Sirven affair (1762-1772) has nonetheless, but mistakenly, been bracketed with it in importance. This is the first-ever study in English to evaluate its evolution, to gauge Voltaire’s true involvement in it and, above all, to rectify misleading assumptions made in both French and English-language pronouncements.