Voltaire! And Émilie du Châtelet! Three brilliant minds under the same roof! Living with Voltaire! *double take* Living with Voltaire? *sigh*
LOL. Thank you so much for this golden overview. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau would like to complain about Algarotti's calling himself the second most famous intellectual in Europe. Whose fanboys were running the French Revoultion, he'd like to know?)
(Giacomo Casanova is not sure whether or not he counts as an intellectual, though "man of letters" is certainly one description for him; he'd like to point out that a) he was better at job-hunting than Algarotti, from inventing the lottery in France to ending up as a librarian in Bohemia as a retirement job, b) his memoirs are still read, which is more than can be said about either the majority of Voltaire's or Rousseau's oeuvre, and c) his name is certainly better known than anyone else's.)
(Dr. Johnson harrumphs and privately wonders whether his fame is too centred on the Anglosaxon world to make him enter this particular competition. THe answer is yes.)
Lady Mary Wortley Montague also briefly showed up in my MT biographies since she, tireless traveller who she was, was convinced MT's police agents had it in for her and were observing her the entire time she was in MT's territories. What with, you know, those sex policing rules. No note of the Austrian police on Lady Mary has survived, though, if they did take any.
Re: Algarotti
LOL. Thank you so much for this golden overview. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau would like to complain about Algarotti's calling himself the second most famous intellectual in Europe. Whose fanboys were running the French Revoultion, he'd like to know?)
(Giacomo Casanova is not sure whether or not he counts as an intellectual, though "man of letters" is certainly one description for him; he'd like to point out that a) he was better at job-hunting than Algarotti, from inventing the lottery in France to ending up as a librarian in Bohemia as a retirement job, b) his memoirs are still read, which is more than can be said about either the majority of Voltaire's or Rousseau's oeuvre, and c) his name is certainly better known than anyone else's.)
(Dr. Johnson harrumphs and privately wonders whether his fame is too centred on the Anglosaxon world to make him enter this particular competition. THe answer is yes.)
Lady Mary Wortley Montague also briefly showed up in my MT biographies since she, tireless traveller who she was, was convinced MT's police agents had it in for her and were observing her the entire time she was in MT's territories. What with, you know, those sex policing rules. No note of the Austrian police on Lady Mary has survived, though, if they did take any.