Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712–1778
Biography
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712 and became one of the most influential thinkers of the eighteenth century. He is remembered as a philosopher and writer, and he also composed music, but his reputation rests chiefly on his ideas about politics and education. His life was restless. He lived in Geneva, in Paris and in the Swiss countryside, and he fell out with a number of friends and patrons. His books also brought him trouble with the authorities, and he died in 1778.
His two best-known works of political thought are the Discourse on Inequality, which argued that private property lay at the root of social inequality, and The Social Contract of 1762, which sought to ground lawful government in the general will of the people. Émile, published the same year, treated education as the formation of a person who could live well within society. These books were read across Europe, and their ideas fed into the debates that led to the French Revolution, which Rousseau did not live to see.
The book on this site is Eloisa: or, A series of original letters, the English edition of Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse, his novel of 1761 told through letters between lovers. The novel was a great success, and its feeling for the Swiss landscape and for private emotion helped prepare both pre-Romantic and Romantic fiction. Readers who know him only as a political thinker will find here the sentimental side of his work. The catalogue credits the English version to W. Kenrick.
This biography was written by a language model. The sources below are where to check it; treat details with care.
Books
Eloisa: or, A series of original letters
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (translated by W. Kenrick)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1761 novel in letters tells of Julie, a Swiss nobleman's daughter, and her tutor Saint-Preux, whom she may not marry. A reader finds a long epistolary romance of passion and duty. This book uses the racial and other slurs of its period as written; the…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.