Les Confessions de J.J. Rousseau [Four Volumes in Two]: Tome Premier; Tome Deuxieme; Tome Troisieme; Tome Quatrieme [with] Declaration de Jean-Jacques Rousseau Relative a M. Le Pasteur Vernes, qu'il Accusoit d'Etre l'Auteur du Libelle Intitule Sentiment …

262, 266; 275, 248 pp. French text. Four volumes in two. This edition includes footnotes, ostensibly by an unnamed editor, as well as Declaration de Jean-Jacques Rousseau Relative a M. Le Pasteur Vernes. Arguments between Voltaire and Rousseau via published pamphlets led to a misunderstanding by which Rousseau attributed Voltaire's thoughts to Vernes, and the Declaration is a series of correspondence related to that event. "Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, The Confessions is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. In his Confessions he relives the first fifty-three years of his radical life with vivid immediacy - from his earliest years, where we can see the source of his belief in the innocence of childhood, through the development of his philosophical and political ideas, his struggle against the French authorities and exile from France following the publication of Emile. Depicting a life of adventure, persecution, paranoia, and brilliant achievement, The Confessions is a landmark work by one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, which was a direct influence upon the work of Proust, Goethe and Tolstoy among others."