{"id":1241,"date":"2014-04-16T16:32:26","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T20:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/?p=1241"},"modified":"2014-04-16T16:32:26","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T20:32:26","slug":"controversial-authorship-voltaire-and-one-of-his-imitators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/controversial-authorship-voltaire-and-one-of-his-imitators\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial Authorship: Voltaire and one of his imitators"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Elise Breton*<\/a><\/sup><\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps because of his distinctive writing style, as well as his great popularity, Voltaire was often imitated as an author. Questions of dubious Voltaire authorship were an area of interest for Voltaire scholar J. Patrick Lee, whose library was recently acquired by McGill. In his article \u201cThe Apocryphal Voltaire: Problems in the Voltairean Canon,\u201d Lee discusses several such titles that are now held in this new collection to McGill.<\/p>\n

\"Les<\/a>As Lee noted, Voltaire had himself complained about the many works that were wrongly attributed to him [translation ours]:<\/p>\n

On ferait une biblioth\u00e8que des ouvrages qu\u2019on m\u2019impute. Tous les r\u00e9fugi\u00e9s errants font de mauvais livres et les vendent sous mon nom \u00e0 des libraires cr\u00e9dules. [\u2026] On me r\u00e9pond que c\u2019est l\u2019\u00e9tat du m\u00e9tier. Si c\u2019est cela le m\u00e9tier est fort triste.1<\/a><\/sup>
\n[One could make a library with all the works that are attributed to me. Every wandering refugee makes a bad book and sells it under my name to gullible booksellers. [\u2026] I am told this is simply the state of the profession. If so, the profession is very sad.]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Among Voltaire\u2019s imitators, the abbot Henri-Joseph Du Laurens was not the least talented. He copied Voltaire\u2019s style so well that many of his works, the most famous being Le Comp\u00e8re Matthieu<\/a><\/em> (of which Lee owned two copies), were attributed to Voltaire by his contemporaries. Other works of Du Laurens held in the Lee Voltaire Collection include editions of Les J\u00e9suitiques<\/em>, which was also for some time attributed to Voltaire. In this copy we can see that an early reader added \u201cpar l\u2019abb\u00e9 du Laurens\u201d in manuscript on the title page.<\/p>\n

Voltaire knew about du Laurens, as he wrote in 1768:<\/p>\n

Il y a un th\u00e9atin qui a conserv\u00e9 son nom de Laurent qui est assez fac\u00e9tieux, et qui d\u2019ailleurs est instruit : il est auteur du comp\u00e8re Matthieu, ouvrage dans le go\u00fbt de Rabelais, dont le commencement est assez plaisant, et la fin d\u00e9testable.2<\/a><\/sup>
\n[There is a Theatine, who kept his name of Laurent, who is quite mischievous, and who is actually educated: he is the author of Comp\u00e8re Matthieu<\/em>, a work in the style of Rabelais, of which the beginning is quite pleasant, and the end odious.]<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Relation<\/a>
\n\u201cPerhaps in an ironic revenge for this exploitation of his name,\u201d3<\/a><\/sup> says Lee, Voltaire decided to return the favor: Voltaire\u2019s Relation du bannissement des J\u00e9suites de la Chine<\/em> is attributed to \u201cl\u2019auteur du Comp\u00e8re Matthieu\u201d on the title page.
\nThese kinds of malicious false attributions of authorship are interesting to track as they are often connected with fascinating stories. And our thanks go to the rare books catalogers, who have to deal with these complicated publishing contexts!<\/p>\n


\n* Elise Breton is an intern in Rare Books and Special Collections from \u00c9cole nationale sup\u00e9rieure des sciences de l’information et des biblioth\u00e8ques<\/em>\u21a9<\/a><\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n

1. Letter to Damilaville, dated 17 December 1766, in M\u00e9moires secrets<\/em> (Londres, 1780), VI, 203, quoted in J. Patrick Lee, \u201cThe Apocryphal Voltaire: Problems in the Voltairean Canon,\u201d in The enterprise of enlightenment<\/em>, ed. Terry Pratt and David McCallam, (Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2004), 272.\u21a9<\/a><\/sup>
\n2. Correspondence and related documents<\/em> in The Complete Works of Voltaire<\/em>, ed. Theodore Besterman, (Banbury and Oxford, 1974). Letter no. D14838, quoted in Lee\u2019s \u201cApocryphal Voltaire,\u201d 268.\u21a9<\/a><\/sup>
\n3. Lee, \u201cApocryphal Voltaire,\u201d 268.\u21a9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Elise Breton* Perhaps because of his distinctive writing style, as well as his great popularity, Voltaire was often imitated as an author. Questions of dubious Voltaire authorship were an area of interest for Voltaire scholar J. Patrick Lee, whose … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1251,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions\/1251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/rbsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}