This is an introduction to eighteenth-century France and, in particular, to the works of Voltaire.

1. Eighteenth-Century
France

2. The Monarchy

3. Louis XVI
Antoine-François Callet, 1788

4. Marie Antoinette and Her Children
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1787

5. Versailles

13. The Queen’s Chamber

14. The Gallery of Mirrors

15. The Aristocracy

16. The Rothschild Room, Paris

17. The Happy Accident of the Swing
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1768

18. The Pleasures of the Ball
Antoine Watteau, 1717

19. Concert at the Oval Salon of Pierre Crozat
Nicolas Lancret, 1720

20. A Reading of Molière
Jean François de Troy, c. 1728

21. Reading Voltaire at the Salon of Mme. Geoffrin, 1755
Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier, 1812

22. The Revolution
of 1789

24. The Taking of the Bastille
Jean-Pierre Houël, 1789

25. Voltaire

26. Voltaire at Twenty-Four
Catherine Lusurier, 1778

27. Friedrich Rossmaessler

28. Jean-Antoine Houdon, 1778

29. Voltaire’s Château at Ferney