Beaumarchais - Autograph Letter Signed - 1785 - Edition Voltaire / Rousseau - Kelh

Testimony to the epic work of editing the works of Voltaire and Rousseau.

"Voltaire's 30 volumes cannot and must not follow one another."

Autograph letter signed by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, known as Beaumarchais (1732-1799). Possibly to Jacques-Gilbert de La Hogue, second director of the Kehl printing works (after Jean-François Le Tellier).

One page in-4. Friday, February 11, 1785 - Marks of restoration to the margins (visible in transparency)

Size: 23 x 18.5 cm.

Precious letter relating to the epic, controversial and perilous work of publishing the works of Voltaire and Rousseau that Beaumarchais undertook with his Société littéraire typographique de Kehl (*Cf below). The project was openly militant: against the adversaries of reason and the progress of the human spirit, the aim was to disseminate Voltaire's thought, to defend and perpetuate his memory, to "erect a monument to the glory of this beautiful genius."

"By editing Voltaire as no author had ever been edited before, Beaumarchais took a place in the Enlightenment movement that his own work alone would not have secured for him. By its scope, by the difficulties of its implementation, by the ideological resistance it encountered, it had no equivalent in its century other than the Encyclopédie." (François Bessire, "Beaumarchais éditeur de Voltaire")

Friday, February 11, 1785

Mon cher ami,

The short instruction I give you here on Voltaire and Rousseau was given by my clerk to your secretary four days ago.

He assured me he understood it very well.

The 30 volumes of Voltaire cannot and must not follow one another.

Each volume being a separate subject, it is very much up to the subscribers, but it was not up to us to deliver this volume or that.

The April delivery will fill all these gaps. So will the Rousseau.

You will have both complete, quite complete.

If you had read the little printed notice that I enclose here, and that we enclosed with the delivery, you would have been without worry.

So be it on the word of your servant and friend.

Beaumarchais

Will you do me the pleasure of coming to dinner at my house?

I always recommend Monsieur Devilles, the stockbroker.

He's an active man, and of course.

*Beaumarchais, a playwright but also a businessman, had launched in 1778 the great adventure of republishing as completely as possible the works of Voltaire, who had died the previous year. To achieve this, he invested heavily and took many risks in the face of fierce opposition from the Church and the State (a ruling was issued by the King's Council on June 3, 1785). After setting up the headquarters of his "Société littéraire typographique" in the fortress of Kehl (a German town near Strabourg) in 1779, he entrusted its literary direction to Condorcet, who worked underground on the basis of earlier editions and manuscripts purchased from the publisher Panckoucke. The volumes were printed from 1784 to 1789.