He was born Pelham Grenville Wodehouse on October 15, 1881 in Guildford, Surrey in South East England.
Wodehouse in 1930, aged 48
Pelham was the third son of Henry Ernest Wodehouse, a magistrate resident in the British colony of Hong Kong, and his wife, Eleanor, daughter of the Rev John Bathurst Deane.
The Wodehouses traced their ancestry back to the Boleynfamily.
P. G. Wodehouse was one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His novels and short stories feature elaborate plots and a unique writing style based on a combination of very formal language, references to classical literature, and contemporary club-room slang.
His first novel was a school story called The Pothunters, serialised incomplete in Public School Magazine in early 1902, and issued in full in hardback on September 18, 1902.
First edition Wikipedia
After starting out with school stories, Wodehouse later switched to comic fiction, creating several regular comic characters who became familiar to the public, most famously the jolly gentleman of leisure Bertie Wooster and his invaluable and impeccable man-servant, Jeeves.
Percy Jeeves, a popular Warwickshire fast bowler, was the inspiration for Wodehouse's man-servant. The author witnessed the cricketer bowling at Cheltenham Cricket Festival in 1913. Jeeves died in the Battle of Somme during World War I, less than a year after the first appearance of the Wodehouse character who would make his name a household word.
The fictional character Aunt Agatha in the Jeeves novels was based on Wodehouse's own aunt, Mary Bathurst Deane.
Other comic characters created by Wodehouse include the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle with his pig, the Empress of Blandings; the disaster-prone opportunist Ukridge; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tales on numerous subjects from film studios to the Church of England.
Wodehouse reached the peak of his productivity in the 1930s, averaging two books each year, and grossing an annual £100,000.
Kaiser Wilhelm II read P.G. Wodehouse aloud to his entourage, glaring at them when they failed to laugh.
In the mid 1900s, the young American composer Jerome Kern was writing for shows at London's Aldwych Theatre. In early 1906 the Aldwych Theatre actor-manager Seymour Hicks invited Wodehouse to join Kern and add topical verses to the shows running there.
Wodehouse aged 23
The first Kern-Wodehouse collaboration, a comic number for The Beauty of Bath titled "Mr [Joseph] Chamberlain", was a show-stopper and was briefly the most popular song in London.
Towards the end of 1915 Jerome Kern introduced Wodehouse to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator.
Wodehouse also wrote scripts and screenplays and, in August 1911, his script A Gentleman of Leisure was produced on the Broadway stage.
His writing for plays also turned into movie scriptwriting, starting with the 1915 filmA Gentleman of Leisure. He joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1930 for a year, and then worked for RKO Pictures in 1937.
Wodehouse's only advice for would-be writers was "apply the seat of the trousers to the surface of the chair."
Wodehouse moved to France in 1934 for tax reasons where he bought a house near Le Touquet in the north.
In 1940 Wodehouse was taken prisoner at Le Touquet by the invading Germans and interned for nearly a year.
After his release, Wodehouse made some humorous broadcasts from German radio in Berlin. Though the talks were comic and apolitical, they were taken amiss in Britain at the time and there was a threat of prosecution. He never returned to England, living from 1947 until his death in the US.
Wodehouse was later exonerated and in 1974 the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, intervened to secure a knighthood for him which was announced in the January 1975 New Year Honours list.
He died of a heart attack in Southampton, New York on February 14, 1975 at the age of 93. Wodehouse was buried at Remsenburg Presbyterian Church four days later.
Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin on October 16, 1854.
Photograph taken in 1882 by Napoleon Sarony
He was the second of three children born to surgeon Sir William Wilde and Jane Wilde, two years behind William ("Willie").
William Wilde (March 1815 –April 19, 1876) was Ireland's leading ear and eye surgeon. He invented the "Ophtholmosope" an instrument for inspecting the interior of the eye especially for focusing on the retina. Also he was the commissioner for Irish Census and discoverer of prehistoric dwellings in the bogs writing books on archaeology and folklore.
He was a renowned philanthropist, and his dispensary for the care of the city's poor, situated in Lincoln Place at the rear of Trinity College, Dublin was the forerunner of the Dublin Eye and Ear Hospital, now located at Adelaide Road.
Sir William was knighted in 1864 for his services as medical adviser and assistant commissioner to the censuses of Ireland.
Wilde's mother Jane (December 27, 1821 – February 3, 1896) was herself a successful writer and an Irish nationalist. A revolutionary poet under the pen name "Speranza" and authority on Celtic folklore, she read the Young Irelanders' poetry to Oscar and Willie, inculcating a love of these poets in her sons. Lady Wilde's interest in the neo-classical revival showed in the paintings and busts of ancient Greece and Rome in her home.
Lady Wilde by Frank Harris
Oscar adored his mother, who was heartbroken when her son was imprisoned. She refused to leave her house and died when he was in jail.
Oscar was brought up at Westland Row. In June 1855, the family moved to 1 Merrion Square, a fashionable residential area. Here, Lady Wilde held a regular Saturday afternoon salon with guests including such figures as Sheridan le Fanu, Samuel Lever, George Petrie, Isaac Butt and Samuel Ferguson.
Wilde family home on Merrion Square. By Pi3.124
Between 1864 to 1871, Oscar spent the summer months with his family in rural Waterford, Wexford and at William Wilde's family home in Mayo. Here the Wilde brothers played with the future novelist George Moore.
Oscar was educated at home up to the age of nine. He attended the fee paying Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, Fermanagh from 1864 to 1871.
Oscar won a royal scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin where he studied the classics from 1871 to 1874. He was an outstanding student, and won the Berkeley Gold Medal, the highest award available to classics students at Trinity gaining first class honours in Classics and Humanities.
He was granted a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where Oscar continued his studies from 1874 to 1878. He led there an aesthetic circle and won the 1878 Oxford Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna". He graduated with a double first.
Oscar Wilde at Oxford
CAREER
Wilde once quipped "I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do-the day after." Despite giving the impression he was lazy, in fact Wilde worked hard; by the late 1880s he was a father, an editor, and a writer.
Wilde had been publishing lyrics and poems in magazines since entering Trinity College, especially in Kottabos and the Dublin University Magazine. In mid-1881, a collection of his works titled Poems was published. It sold out its first print run of 750 copies, prompting further printings.
After leaving Oxford, Wilde travelled around deliver lectures on the new "English Renaissance in Art" and interior decoration. He made a huge impression in 1882 in Canada and the USA with his flamboyant style during his lecture tour.
Keller cartoon from the Wasp of San Francisco depicting Wilde on the occasion of his visit there in 1882
After marrying Constance Lloyd in 1884 Wilde moved around English high society gaining his reputation as a wit supported by his wife's fortune.
With a family to support, in mid-1887 Wilde became the editor of The Lady's World magazine. He promptly renamed it The Woman's World and raised its tone, adding serious articles on parenting, culture, and politics, keeping discussions of fashion and arts.
Oscar Wilde was jailed for two years in 1895 for homosexual offences with Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. His reputation was banjaxed by the trial.
When he was released two years later, Wilde was an outcast from society. He spent his last three years penniless, in self-inflicted exile from artistic circles. He quipped: "When I was young I used to think money is the most important thing in life; Now that I am old, I know it."
Wilde's death merited only a few sentences in the newspapers of the day.
TRIAL AND IMPRISONMENT
In mid-1891 Wilde was introduced to Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. By 1893 they were consorting together regularly in a tempestuous affair.
Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas in 1893
On February 18, 1895, Lord Douglas' father the Marquess of Queensberry left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albemarle, inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite" [sic].
Wilde, encouraged by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, initiated a private prosecution against Queensberry for libel. During the trial Wilde's true relationship with Bosie came to light. This led to Irishman's own arrest and trial for gross indecency with men. After two more trials Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years' hard labour.
Wilde in the dock, from The Illustrated Police News, 4 May 1895
Standing handcuffed on his way to prison in the pouring rain, Wilde quipped "If this is the way Queen Vic treats her convicts, she doesn't deserve to have any."
When Wilde was publicly derided at Clapham Junction while being transferred to Reading Jail, he saw a parallel between his plight and the mockery of the arrested Jesus Christ.
When he was released on May 19, 1897, Wilde moved to France under the assumed name of 'Sebastian Melmoth', after the central character of the gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer.
WORKS
Wilde wrote one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was first published complete in the July 1890 issue of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. An intense autobiographical novel, Dorian Gray achieved eternal youth by his portrait ageing on his behalf. It was severely criticised as immoral.
Wilde was deeply impressed by the English writers John Ruskin and Walter Pater, who argued for the central importance of art in life. He later commented ironically on this view when he wrote, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, "All art is quite useless". This quote also reflects Wilde's support of the aesthetic movement's basic principle: "Art for art's sake".
The Duchess of Padua was a five-act melodramatic tragedy set in Padua. Wilde wrote the play in blank verse for the actress Mary Anderson in early 1883 while she was in Paris. After she turned it down, it was abandoned until its first performance at the Broadway Theatre in New York City under the title Guido Ferranti on January 26, 1891, where it ran for just three weeks. Wilde's reaction to its failure was "The play itself was a profound success- but the audience was a profound failure".
Wilde's playSalome tells in one act the Biblical story of the stepdaughter of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, who, to her stepfather's dismay but to the delight of her mother Herodias, requests the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter as a reward for dancing the dance of the seven veils. The play was written in French but was banned in 1892 by Lord Chamberlain on the grounds of portraying biblical characters. It was eventually premiered in Paris on February 11, 1896, while Wilde was in prison.
Wilde wrote four successive comical plays in the 1890s. The first one was Lady Windermere's Fan, which was written for the actress Lilly Langtry in 1892. It was first performed on February 20, 1892, at the St James's Theatre in London.
A Woman of No Importance premièred on April 19, 1893 at London's Haymarket Theatre. Like Wilde's other society plays, it satirized English upper-class society.
An Ideal Husband opened on January 3, 1895 and continued for 124 performances until Wilde's arrest for "gross indecency." His most autobiographical play, it's ironic that An Ideal Husband was the last play before Wilde's fall as it features Sir Robert Chiltern MP who is faced with public disgrace.
His witty comedyThe Importance of Being Earnest was first performed on February 14, 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London. Though it was Wilde's most successful play it closed the same year as it opened due to the scandal involving the playwright and Lord Douglas.
The original production of The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895
Dame Edith Evans once said she'd played Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest everywhere except underwater.
Wilde wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol whilst incarcerated there for homosexual offences. The finished poem was published by Leonard Smithers on February 13, 1898 under the name C.3.3., which stood for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3.
APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER
The face that launched a thousand quips was covered by long, flowing hair.
Wilde reclining with Poems, by Napoleon Sarony in New York in 1882.
While at Magdalen College, Oscar Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. He began wearing his hair long and openly scorning so-called "manly" sports, and began decorating his rooms with peacockfeathers, lilies, sunflowers, blue china and other objets d'art.
Wilde's behaviour cost him a dunking in the River Cherwell in addition to having his rooms trashed, but the cult spread among certain segments of society to such an extent that languishing attitudes, "too-too" costumes and Aestheticism generally became a recognized pose. Aestheticism was caricatured by Gilbert and Sullivan in their 1881 mocking operetta Patience.
Oscar Wilde had an enormous centre parting with a necktie attachment and often wore a cravat and kneebreeches. He habitually carried a huge lily or sunflower and was known for wearing a green carnation. The green carnation thence became a symbol of homosexuality in the early 20th century, especially through the book The Green Carnation and Noël Coward's song, "We All Wear a Green Carnation" in his operetta, Bitter Sweet.
Wilde desired to bring some color and ornamentation back into the Victorian drab costumes and he favoured velvet jacket, flowing ties and fancy waistcoats together with jewelled watch chains and flowerbuttonholes, silkstockings and satin knee breeches.
Oscar Wilde in 1889
He lost his Irish accent when underground mockery forced Wilde to switch to an Edwardian toff's drawl.
Full of bon mots, Wilde made a living from his wit. "Are you enjoying yourself, Mr Wilde?" enquired the hostess. "Certainly" he replied, there is nothing else here to enjoy."
"The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it".
"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."
"I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar and often convincing."
"The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on."
The word “dude” was coined by Wilde and his friends as a hybrid of duds” (slang for clothes) and “attitude”.
RELATIONSHIPS
After graduating from Magdalen, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met and fell in love with Florence Balcome. She in turn became engaged to Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula. On hearing of her engagement, Wilde wrote to her stating his intention to leave Ireland permanently.
In London, Wilde met in 1879 Constance Lloyd, daughter of the wealthy QC, Horace Lloyd. A demure, religious, happy and pretty girl, he fell head over heels in love. Oscar described Constance as a “grave, slight, violet-eyed little artemis”.
When Oscar was on his lecture tours, he and Constance telegraphed each other twice a day. They were besotted during their courtship.
Constance Lloyd. Painting by Louis Desanges 1882
Constance was visiting Dublin in 1884 when Oscar was in the city to give lectures at the Gaiety Theatre. He proposed to her and they married on May 29, 1884 in Paddington, London.
They honeymooned in Paris and set up home at 16 Tite Street, Chelsea. Constance's allowance of £250 allowed the Wildes to live in relative luxury. He said "Town life nourishes and perfects all the more civilised elements in man"
The couple had two sons, Cyril (1885) and Vyvyan (1886).
Oscar, Constance and Cyril
However, problems were occurring, Constance was soon putting on weight and sickening; her heavy, bloated body started sickening Oscar, whose eyes began wondering. She was finding it more and more difficult to chide Oscar's mocking of her Christian beliefs and their marriage.
Wilde's sexual orientation has variously been considered bisexual or gay, depending on how the terms are defined. His inclination towards relations with younger men was relatively well-known within his circles. In 1886 he embarked on his first homosexual affair with Robbie Ross, a Cambridge student.
More and more rumours were reaching Constance's ears of Oscar's affairs. In 1895 Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry, for libel and as a result Wilde's true relationship with his son Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas. came to light. Wilde was subsequently jailed for two years in 1895 for homosexual offences with Lord Douglas.
Wilde's marriage finally broke up because of the scandal involving him and Lord Douglas. Constance changed her surname to Holland and sent her sons to Switzerland to be educated while she travelled on the European continent. Being deprived of his sons was Oscar’s biggest grief.
Constance 1896 in Heidelberg
In 1898 Constance had spinal surgery in Genoa and died soon after on April 7th. She was buried in Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa, Italy.
Cyril was killed in France in World War I. Vyvyan survived the war and went on to become an author and translator.
Wilde: "I like Wagner's music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage."
Oscar Wilde once asserted the only exercise he took was breakfast in bed. He also quipped "Football is a game for rough little girls not delicate little boys."
Despite this he was very physically strong. At Oxford University when a gang of students tried to beat Wilde up he booted out the first, virtually knocked out the second with a punch, threw out the third through the air then carried the fourth downstairs and buried him beneath his own furniture.
Wilde briefly took up rowing but insisted on maintaining a stately and unhurried pace. He was a strictly non-playing member of Magdalen College, Oxford Cricket Club.
He never took up hunting. Wilde said that fox hunting was, "the English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable."
Oscar Wilde had a curious habit of tearing off the top corner of a page as he read it, rolling the paper into a ball and then popping it into his mouth.
DRINK
When the flamboyant Wilde lectured his way round America he ended up drinking gold miners under the saloon tables of the Wild West.
When arrested for homosexual offences, Wilde was drinking hock wine and talking to Lord Douglas at London's Cardogan hotel.
The wit and playwright liked champagne and regularly frequented the Café Royal at 68 Regent Street, London, a French style restaurant.
HEALTH
Wilde is believed to have had syphilis for a number of years having originally caught it from a female prostitute whilst at Oxford. By the 1890s his teeth had turned black from the mercury he took for it.
On one occasion whilst staying with friends at a country house, the Irish writer and wit came down for breakfast looking very pale. "I'm afraid you are ill" remarked someone, "No not ill" replied Wilde. Only tired. The fact is I picked a primrose in the wood yesterday and it was so ill I have been up with it all night."
During his stay at Reading Gaol, Wilde suffered from a long-term infected ear. Earlier after a failed operation by an ear specialist Wilde was informed how much it had cost. He replied "Oh well then, I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means."
Wilde's cell in Reading Gaol. By Jack1956
BELIEFS
Though Wilde lived a bohemian lifestyle, he spent his life wondering whether to become a Catholic or not. However, he still couldn't resist using his legendary wit to mock religion alongside everything else he did. "Truth in matters of religion is simply the opinion that has survived." he once quipped.
By 1900 Oscar Wilde was dying in a shabby Paris bedroom. He had seen into the depths of his own soul after a lifetime of deprivation and his time in prison had led him to reflect on his moral errors. On his deathbed when asked by Father Cuthbert Dunne if he wished to be received into the Catholic Church, the dying writer raised his hand.
DEATH
Oscar Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900.
There are two versions of Wilde's last words in a Paris bedroom. Either accepting a drink of champagne, he remarked so "I am dying beyond my means". Or staring at his shabby Paris bedroom, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go."
Different opinions are given on the cause of the meningitis; His biographer Richard Ellmann claimed it was syphilitic; Wilde's physicians, Dr. Paul Cleiss and A'Court Tucker reported that the condition stemmed from an old suppuration of the right ear and do not allude to syphilis. Most modern scholars and doctors agree that syphilis was unlikely to have been the cause of his death.
Wilde was buried in the Cimetière de Bagneux outside Paris but was later moved to Le Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
The tomb of Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise Cemetery. By Agateller
Oscar Wilde's grave is covered with old lipstickkisses from his female fans.
He was born François-Marie Arouet in Paris on November 21, 1694 to François Arouet and Marie-Marguerite Daumart or D'Aumard.
Voltaire was a nom de plume an anagram of Arovet L(e) I(eune), the Latinized spelling of his surname, François adopted the name Voltaire after his first spell in prison in 1718.
Portrait by Nicolas de Largillière, c. 1724
As an infant François had a feeble constitution and the baptismal rites were not performed for months after his birth as it was felt he wouldn't survive.
His father Francis Arouet was the treasurer of local revenues and a Jansenist, (a movement aimed at reforming the French Roman Catholic Church from within). He appears to have been strict, but neither inhospitable nor tyrannical.
François' mother Margaret belonged to a noble family. She died when he was seven-years-old. Not much is known about her.
He was the fifth child of his parents, preceded by twin boys (one of whom survived), a girl, Marguerite-Catherine, and another boy who died young.
Marguerite-Catherine Arouet, of whom her younger brother was very fond, married early; the elder brother, Armand, was a strong Jansenist and had a poor relationship with François.
François was nicknamed "Zozo" by his family,
The Abbé de Châteauneuf, a friend of François' mother, instructed him in belles lettres and deism, and young François showed a faculty for facile verse-making.
In his earliest school years the Abbé presented François to the famous atheistauthor Ninon de Lenclos. When she died, tragically, in 1705, she left him money so he could buy books.
At the age of ten François was sent to the Jesuit Collège Louis-le-Grand, and remained there till 1711. There, he was taught latin, theology, and rhetoric. Though he deprecated the education he had received, it formed the basis of Voltaire's considerable knowledge, and probably kindled his lifelong devotion to the stage.
CAREER
In August 1711, at the age of seventeen, François left school and returned home. The usual battle followed between a son who desired no profession but literature and a father who refused to consider literature a profession at all. So Voltaire studied law, at least nominally.
Voltaire pretended to work in Paris as an assistant to a notary, while secretly composing poetry. When his father found out, he sent Voltaire to study law in Caen, Normandy. But the young man continued to write, producing essays and historical studies.
Voltaire's wit made him popular among some of the aristocratic families with whom he mixed. In 1713, his father obtained a job for him as a secretary to the new French ambassador in the Netherlands, the marquis de Châteauneuf, who was the abbé's brother. However Voltaire embarked on a scandalous romance, so his father ordered him home.
In December 1721 Voltaire's father died leaving him property, rather more than four thousand livres a year, which was soon increased by a pension of half the amount from the regent. From then on he had private means and was not dependent on rich benefactors meaning Voltaire could write what he liked.
Voltaire lived in a France which was oppressively mis-governed and overtaxed and the writer was not shy in lampooning the ruling class. In 1716 Voltaire wrote a satirical poem about the Duke of Orleans that resulted in a nearly year-long imprisonment at the Bastille. He was imprisoned from May 16, 1717 to April 15, 1718 in a windowless cell with ten-foot-thick walls.
The end of 1725 brought a disastrous close to this period of his life. When Voltaire was insulted by the chevalier de Rohan, he replied with his usual sharpness of tongue, and shortly afterwards, when dining with the Duke of Sully, Voltaire was called out and beaten by the chevalier's hirelings, while Rohan watched. Seeking redress, Voltaire challenged de Rohan to a duel.
On the morning appointed for the duel Voltaire was arrested and sent for the second time to the Bastille. He was kept in confinement a fortnight, and was then packed off to England in accordance with his own request. He spent three years in exile there and said on his return to France from England in 1729 he said of his temporary home . "Imagine a country with 350 religions and only one sauce."
Voltaire was a canny businessman. One day in 1729 he had supper with the Mathematician, Lacondamine, who told him that the new Paris lottery had been miscalculated. If all the tickets were bought, there would be a clear profit to the buyers of a million francs. The pair bought all the tickets they could — and kept winning. The French government cottoned on and took Voltaire to court, but he was found to have done nothing illegal.
Voltaire became a wealthy man from both the Paris lottery and crafty investing in the slave trade. For the rest of his life he kept a pension list from which he financed struggling writers and victims of injustice.
By the 1750s, Voltaire was a celebrity renowned throughout Europe. Famous visitors came from everywhere to see the renowned free-thinker and discuss his work with him.
Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton, 1738
Though Voltaire made fun of royalty, he lived at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia between 1750 and 1753 and accepted a pension from him.
Once when Frederick the Great sent Voltaire some verses asking him to correct and criticise them, the French philosopher replied "See, what a quantity of his dirty linen, the King has sent me to wash".
French Huguenot merchant Jean Calas, who was wrongly convicted of killing his son, died on March 10, 1763 after being tortured by authorities. The event inspired Voltaire to begin campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.
In January 1754 Louis XV banned Voltaire from Paris, so he moved to Geneva. In 1759 Voltaire purchased the estate of Ferney in France, near the Swiss border where he lived until 1778.
Voltaire's château at Ferney, France. By Brücke-Osteuropa
WORKS
Voltaire wrote all kinds of literature. He was known as the Great Mocker as he railed against the things he hated. Priests, kings, tyrants and oppressors and especially the Regent Phillipe d’Orléans all felt the power of his poisoned pen.
Voltaire first came to fame with his 1718 anti-clerical work Oedipe.
In 1747 Voltaire wrote Zadig, an anti-clerical novel about a virtuous youth who can't understand why he is so unlucky. An angel explains that some good comes out of evil and that nothing happens by chance. Everything is predestined.
Voltaire 's most famous work was Candide, ou l'Optimisme, a short satirical book, in which all manner of adversities were heaped upon Candide and his cheerful tutor Dr Pangloss, who stood up to them philosophically. Candide was completed in 1759, four years after the Lisbonearthquake and the work was intended to satirize philosophical optimism and to question the goodness of God. The character of the incurable optimist Dr Pangloss, who declared "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds" was intended to poke fun at Rousseau's theories.
a frontispiece of Voltaire's Candide, or Optimism.
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was his major philosophical work, It consisted of articles he had written for the rationalist Diderot's Encyclopédie. The latter appeared in 35 volumes between 1751 and 1780 voicing free thought, Enlightenment ideas and revolutionary change. The last volume of Voltaire's major free-thinking work was published posthumously in 1780.
L'Ingénu, published in 1767, was about a Canadian youth, who having spent 20 years amongst the Huron Indians, came to France and was astonished at the ways of Roman Catholicism and Louis XV's bureaucracy.
He wrote between fifty and sixty plays (including a few unfinished ones). Ironically, despite Voltaire's comic talent, he wrote only one good comedy, Nanine, but many good tragedies -- two of them, Zaire and Mérope, are ranked among the ten or twelve best plays of the whole French classical school.
Upon his death Catherine the Great purchased Voltaire's entire collection of works and moved it to The Hermitage in Russia.
Voltaire summed up his satirical career thus: "My one and only prayer to God is a very short one. 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' " God has granted it.
BELIEFS
Voltaire was raised in Jansenism and later became a deist and a critic of the intolerance and petty squabbles in both Protestant and Catholic Churches.
He was the high priest of the Enlightenment, which can be summed up by "judge a man by his questions, rather than by his answers". Unfortunately this led to Voltaire questioning basic biblical principles. He referred to Christianity as the "infamous thing" and claimed "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." His views provoked seismic waves of shock and disgust in the churches. Voltaire had erred in believing the falseness and hypocrisy of most of the mid-eighteenth century religion as representing true Christianity.
In Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary he wrote regarding the hymns of the day: "The most High has a decided taste for vocal music, provided it be lugubrious and gloomy enough."
Voltaire; A Philosophical Dictionary. 2nd ed., London: 1824
Voltaire once prophesied that in "another century and there will not be a Bible on Earth." Ironically a century after his death his home was occupied by the Geneva Bible Society.
Though a meat eater himself, Voltaire was sympathetic to the philosophy of vegetarianism. That viewpoint had come increasingly into vogue in 18th century France due to the publication by Antonio Cocchi of the teachings of the ancient Greek vegetarian Pythagoras.
The French philosophical writer was scornful of the medical profession in his day. Voltaire quipped that doctors pour "drugs of which they knew little about, to cure diseases of which they knew less, into human beings of which they knew nothing." Also he jested that "the art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while Nature cures the disease."
PERSONAL LIFE
Voltaire was single all his life.
When Voltaire started working for the Marquis de Châteauneuf in The Hague he fell in love with Olympe Dunoyer (known as 'Pimpette') a Protestant girl from a poor family, Their relationship, considered scandalous, was discovered by de Châteauneuf and Voltaire's father stopped the affair by procuring a lettre de cachet, though he never used it.
At the age of thirty-nine, Voltaire started a sixteen-year liaison with the philosopher Émilie Du Châtelet (December 17, 1706 – September 10, 1749) , the Divine Emilie. She was twenty-seven, married, and the mother of three children. "I found, in 1733, a young woman who thought as I did," Voltaire wrote in his memoirs, "and who decided to spend several years in the country, cultivating her mind."
Voltaire lived with Emilie Du Châtelet for many years. She was the co-author with Voltaire of a commentary on Isaac Newton and a kindred spirit.
Portrait by Maurice Quentin de La Tour of Émilie du Châtelet
It was Voltaire who originated the story of Isaac Newton and his apple. Apparently he was told the story by Mrs Conduit, Newton’s niece.
Arrogant and greedy, Voltaire was generous to his friends but a merciless satirist and mocker to his enemies. So sharp was his tongue that no one is on record as having beaten him in an argument.
Voltaire was said to have drowned 40-50 cups of coffee daily. On his death bed he quipped "I am dying of 250,000 cups of coffee".
DEATH
Visiting Paris for the opening of his latest tragic play, Irene in February 1778, the 83-year-old Voltaire attended a boisterous party to celebrate and exhausted himself meeting all the people who had turned out to acclaim him. He believed he was about to die but then recovered for a time. However, Voltaire soon became ill again and he died on May 30, 1778. His last words were "Do let me die in peace."
House in Paris where Voltaire died. By Edal Anton Lefterov - Own work,
Because of his criticism of the church Voltaire was denied burial in church ground. He was finally buried at an abbey in Champagne. In 1791 his remains were moved to a resting place at The Panthéon in Paris.
His final resting place, unfortunately, became a garbage heap. In 1814 an unknown group robbed Voltaire's grave and disposed of him in a nearby garbage heap, no one the wiser (for more than 50 years) until his sarcophagus was inspected and discovered... empty. All that remains of Voltaire is his heart - at the Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale.
Edmund Bentley later wrote:
It was a weakness of Voltaire's To forget to say his prayers And one which to his shame He never overcame.
He was born at 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850, the only son of Thomas Stevenson, and his wife Margaret Isabella (born Balfour).
He was christened Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. At about age 18, Stevenson changed the spelling of "Lewis" to "Louis", and in 1873, he dropped "Balfour."
Robert Louis Stevenson at the age of seven
Thomas Stevenson was a pious but amenable lighthouse engineer, who followed in the footsteps of Robert's granddad.
Robert had a tendency to extreme coughs and fevers especially in winter. His health problems exacerbated when the family moved to a damp, chilly house at 1 Inverleith Terrace in Edinburgh in 1851.
The family moved again to the sunnier 17 Heriot Row in Newton, Edinugh when Stevenson was six years old, but the tendency to extreme sickness in winter remained with him until he was eleven.
Stevenson's childhood home in Heriot Row By Kim Traynor
As a child young Robert was much influenced by a strict nurse, Cummy (Alison Cunningham), who used tell him stories of ghosts, conspiracies and Calvinist judgement. On one occasion she made him pray for the souls of his parents because they had played whist on the Sabbath.
Robert often explored as a child local cemeteries and he also used to like walking in the East Lothian Lowlands with a lantern. He maintained a fondness for cemeteries all his life.
Stevenson studied at Edinburgh University where he attended few lectures excusing himself on the grounds that too much concentration might bring on brain fever.
As a student Stevenson typically had one book in his pocket for reading and a book in his other pocket for making notes.
Stevenson got a criminal conviction as a student for throwing snowballs.
CAREER
He began his education as an engineer but, despite his family history, Robert showed little aptitude and soon switched to studying law.
As he grew older, Robert's father became disappointed that his son seemed more interested in drinking and dancing rather than following his family's lighthouse engineer career. He considered that Robert spent too much time with the working class elements in the city.
After leaving university Stevenson began to publish reviews in the Cornbull magazine and wandered off to France.
Stevenson qualified as an advocate in 1875, but he never practiced, as he devoted all his energies to travel and writing. His career as an advocate only earned him four guineas in his whole life.
Stevenson c. 1877
Until he became a successful writer in his 30s, Stevenson's father continued to support his son.
Treasure Island, his first widely popular novel, was first published as a book in 1883, by Cassell & Co. After the success of Treasure Island, Stevenson enjoyed huge financial success.
While in California marrying Fanny Osbourne in 1880, Stevenson wrote pieces for the local Monterey newspaper.
RELATIONSHIPS
Stevenson had a youthful infatuation with Frances Sitwell, a clergyman's wife who was 11 years his senior. She had contacts who were able to introduce him to the London literary scene.
Stevenson met the charming Mrs Fanny Osbourne, who was ten years his senior, in an artist colony in France. She had left her faithless husband in California and was staying in Grez.
Fanny Osbourne was dark haired, olive skinned, a heavy smoker and a gun toting sharp shooter. She was also a writer and painter with little talent.
Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, c. 1876
The tomboy Fanny's Wild West experiences triggered Stevenson's imagination and by the summer of 1877 they were courting.
The following year Fanny left for California to arrange a divorce, and Stevenson signed himself "Uxorious Billy" in his letters to his married girlfriend as he wrote of the privations he suffered in the months spent waiting for her to divorce her first husband.
In July 1879 Stevenson received a telegram from her saying she was gravely ill in Monterey, California, please come. The fragile Stevenson arrived sick, the trip having nearly killed him.
It turned out that Fanny had had an emotional breakdown related to indecision about whether to leave her philandering husband. She ultimately chose Stevenson, and in May 1880, they were married in San Francisco. The Scottish novelist also took on her son Lloyd.
Fanny and Stevenson honeymooned on the frontier in Napa Valley, California and during their stay in the sunshine, he regained his health.
After returning to Britain, Stevenson and Fanny lived in Bournemouth between 1884-87 in a house bought for them by his father.
Stevenson described marriage as "At its lowest, a sort of friendship recognized by the police."
TRAVELS
Stevenson loved to travel. He once wrote: "For my part I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move."
Stevenson was sent to Menton on the French Riviera in November 1873 to recuperate after his health failed. He returned in better health in April 1874, but he returned to France several times after that.
In 1878, Stevenson took a stubborn, manipulative donkey called Modeste on a 12-day, 200-kilometer (120 mi) hiking journey through the sparsely populated and impoverished areas of the Cévennes mountains in south-central France before returning to Edinburgh to write his book Travels with a Donkey.
In the summer of 1882 Fanny and Stevenson rented a cottage in Hyres, near Toulons in the South of France. He later wrote: "I was only happy once and that was at Hyres."
After his father's death in 1887, Stevenson tired of Bournemouth bourgeoisie life and decided to travel again. Fanny and him arrived in New York September 1887. They stayed north of New York in "Cure Cottage" in the frontier town Saranac Lake.
Stevenson's "Cure Cottage" in Saranac Lake
During the intensely cold winter in Saramac Lake, Stevenson wrote some of his best essays and began The Master of Ballantrae. He also planned, for the following summer, a trip to the southern Pacific Ocean.
To gain first hand experience with immigrants who were travelling west to seek their fortunes, Stevenson rode with them from New York to the west coast in a springless, rattling old railway coach with closely bunched backless benches for seats.
In June 1888, Stevenson chartered the yacht Casco and set sail with his wife, step child, his mother and family servants from San Francisco. The seaair and thrill of adventure for a time restored his health, and he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands.
When they arrived in Samoa in Christmas 1889, the Stevensons were mistaken for a group of wandering actors.
The following year, Stevenson purchased a tract of about 400 acres (1.6 km²) in Upolu, an island in Samoa. Here, after two aborted attempts to visit Scotland, he established himself, after much work, upon his estate in the village of Vailima.
WRITINGS
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in a concise, precise, journalistic style with appalling handwriting.
Stevenson in 1885
Stevenson's 1879 account of his walking tour in France, An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, was one of the first books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities.
Robert Stevenson collaborated with William Ernest Henley on several plays in the late 1870s and 1880s.
In 1879 Stevenson and Henley wrote Deacon Brodie a melodrama about the criminal Bill Brodie who was a respectable cabinet maker and pillar of the community by day, and a leader of a gang of robbers by night. He was finally hanged on a gallows of his own design. The play was unsuccessful, but Stevenson, whose father owned furniture made by Brodie, remained fascinated by the dichotomy between Brodie's respectable façade and his real nature and was inspired to write Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In 1885 Stevenson wrote a book of poems for childrenA Child's Garden of Verses. Stevenson dedicated the poems to his nurse Cummy, who cared for him during his many childhood illnesses.
Published on January 5, 1886, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was an immediate best-seller, Stevenson's real breakthrough book, and made him a talking point in Victorian society.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written in three days in his Bournemouth Villa while Stevenson was wracked by coughing fits and drinking himself into stupors to try to counteract this. The plot was outlined by a nightmare during which one man was pressed into a cabinet where he swallowed a drug and changed into another being.
Stevenson based The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on his earlier play Deacon Brodie about a respected businessman and Edinburgh town councilor by day who was a robber by night.
Stevenson's wife criticized his story but saw its potential saying it should be a full length allegory, rather than just an essay. As a result, Stevenson burnt the manuscript and rewrote it in another three days. It originally appeared as a shilling shocker.
Jekyll and Hyde Title
You might think the "Jekyll" in "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is pronounced such that it rhymes with "freckle," but you'd be wrong. According to none other than R,L. Stevenson himself, the name should be pronounced "Jee-kal" as in rhymes with “fecal”.
Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure novel, which was first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886. It was published as a novel the same year and quickly became one of Stevenson's best known works.
Stevenson also wrote Scottish ballads like "Sing me a song of a land that is gone."
"Nobody moves characters from one room to another like Stevenson." Graham Greene.
"If you don't like Stevenson there is something wrong with you." JL Borges.
APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER
Stevenson had a long face, black lank hair, dark complexion with a lean figure.
He had a "musing and melancholy expression" with "splendid smouldering rich eyes" according to Mark Twain.
Photograph of Robert Louis Stevenson
A bohemian in his 20s in Edinburgh, Stevenson wore a black velveteer smoking jacket (in colder climes) and a wide hat.
When the New York Herald interviewed Robert Louis Stevenson, he was wearing a "short velvet jacket and a peculiarly cut low hat". With his black hair full over his shoulders and his clean cut refined features he suggested a Van Dyke.
Stevenson was a charismatic but private individual. He was said to be witty, charming, straightforward, likeable, open, warm and self-depreciating.
In later life, Stevenson had his rotten teeth replaced with wooden ones.
BELIEFS
Influenced by his Calvinist nanny, the young Stevenson feared he might plummet into eternal torment while he slept, and had nightmares in which he stood tongue-tied before God's throne. These nocturnal terrors persisted throughout his life, sometimes making him doubt his sanity. They were, he acknowledged, vital for his writing, giving access to the febrile inventiveness of the unconscious. But he condemned adults who exposed children to such horrors, and sloughed off religion as an adolescent, converting instead to Darwinism.
Stevenson's Presbyterian father was disappointed when Robert announced that he had decided to become an agnostic and a believer in Darwinism. They had many powerful arguments on the truth of Christianity with Stevenson claiming that the God of his parent's religion showed a "disloyalty to Christian love".
HOBBIES AND INTERESTS
Besides playing the piano and flageolet, Stevenson wrote over 123 original musical compositions or arrangements.
Portrait by John Singer Sargent, 1887
Robert Louis Stevenson loved God's creatures. He once traveled on a boat to America that turned out to be carrying a cargo of zoo animals. The stink and din were unbearable to everyone but Stevenson found them bracing and made friends with a baboon.
Once, when playing billiards with Herbert Spencer at London's Saville Club Stevenson came up with the maxim "Proficiency in billiards is a sign of a mis-spent youth."
HEALTH
Stevenson suffered from catarrhal consumption from an early age, and the chronic Edinburgh dampness where he was bought up didn't aid his health . Most of his childhood was spent in bed where he spent many a long night, kept awake by his coughing. There his imagination ran wild, and he often dreamed of exciting adventures.
Illness continued to be a recurrent feature of Stevenson's adult life and left him extraordinarily thin.
In 1873 at the age of 23, Stevenson fell ill and the diagnosis was "nervous exhaustion with a threatening of phthisis". The prescription was a winter on the French Riviera.
After marrying Fanny Osbourne the delicate Stevenson had his first hemorrhage and became increasingly anxious. He decided to leave for the South Seas for health reasons.
LAST YEARS
In 1888, Stevenson traveled to the island of Molokai just weeks after the death there of Father Damien. He spent twelve days at the missionary priest's residence, Bishop Home at Kalawao. Stevenson taught the local girls there to play croquet.
Stevenson settled at Vailima, high above Apia, in Western Samoa where he sought a cure for his tuberculosis. There he built an extravagant house from redwood imported from California which he filled with some of his family's Edinburgh furniture. In its grounds he made a garden and farm.
Stevenson with his wife and their household in Vailima, Samoa, c. 1892
Of his Samoan farm Stevenson commented, "There is nothing so interesting as weeding."
Stevenson threw parties at his Samoa home for native chiefs and visiting warships and ran a large household with 19 island servants. He felt isolated there from his literary friends.
He played cricket on the island with his family with unripe oranges.
Stevenson found himself in the middle of a bloody civil war during his time in Samoa. He loved it- he was living out one of his adventure stories.
He was known to Samoans as "Tustala", the Teller of Tales".
DEATH
On December 3, 1894, Stevenson was preparing a supper salad and talking to his wife. He went to fetch a bottle of wine from his cellar and suddenly collapsed.
Stevenson died within a few hours, probably of a brain (cerebral) haemorrhage, aged 44.
He was buried like a mountain chief in a hillside grave by the Samoaeans at his Western Samoa house.
Burial on Mount Vaea in Samoa, 1894
In his will, Stevenson bequeathed his birthday to a little girl who had been born on Christmas Day.
