Basnage wrote the Instructions after accepting to help the French government to deal with the prospect of a Protestant revolt. Basnage was never able, though, to use his influence with the government to obtain relief for the Protestants.

Jacques Cassini was son of the astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini and his heir as leader of the royal observatory in Paris. The result of fifty years of intermittent fieldwork, De la grandeur et figure de la terre disclosed that the earth's equatorial diameter falls short of the distance from pole to pole.

A collection of moral essays in which Defoe represents his novel as an allegory of his own life. This was partly a defence against the disapproval of his fellow Puritans who regarded fiction as hardly distinquishable from a set of lies.

Written in collaboration with John Trenchard. Gordon also published commentaries on Sallust and Tacitus. Holbach published a translation in 1767.

Gravesande, a Professor at Leiden (1717-42), was a member of Royal Society who had met Newton; in his treatise he set out “to make good the Newtonian Method, which I have followed in this work”. The treatise was based on lectures he gave at the University of Leiden.

A work on the general properties of conics and of higher plane curves

A five-act verse drama, which like all of Marivaux’s early plays, was written for the Comèdie-Française.

Periodical (1720-24) modeled on Joseph Addison’s The Spectator

A rejection of Spinoza's approach to philosophy. Nieuwentijt claimed that the natural sciences are consistent with biblical revelation and argued that the application of the methods of mathematics to the real world was an error and a mark of atheism.

Circulated privately, a project for a liturgy in imitation of the Anglian, containing texts from pagan authors.

Contains the first published essay on the esoteric-exoteric distinction, a distinction important for understanding his own views as well as those of his fellow free thinkers, such as Anthony Collins. The work contains an essay providing natural explanations of the miracles in the Old Testament.

A series satirical papers. Amhurst was expelled from Oxford in 1719 for Whig sympathies. He founded and edited the journal The Craftsman, which became immensely popular and was imprisoned for publishing a letter purportedly by Colley Cibber, attacking the censorship of plays (1737).

One of the most successful eighteenth century dictionaries of English; it appeared in 27 editions before 1800. It included 28,000 entries, more than the later dictionary of Johnson who drew on the 2^nd edition for his list of words.

Berkeley’s attack on Newton’s philosophy of space.

The Lettres persanes enjoyed great success and an English translation, with the title Persian Letters, appeared in 1722. The book launched the genre of ‘innocent’ or ‘naive’ commentary on the ways of a nation, or nations seen through the eyes of an ignorant but observant foreigner. Montesquieu gives a satirical protrait of French society through the eyes of two Persian travellers, Usbek and Rica; he mocks the reign of Louis XIV, discusses, through the allegorical story of the Troglodytes, Hobbes’s theory of the state of nature, compares Islam and Christianity, reflects the controversy about the papal bull Unigentus, and satirizes Roman Catholic doctrine. The works’s anonymity was soon dispelled and Montesquieu became famous.

The Lettres allude to a range of ideas which were to become more widespread as the century wore on: the supremacy of morality over religion, religion as a social phenomenon and reduced to the light of reason, the iniquity of absolutism, and a sketch for a philosophy of history.

Wolf's "German Politics" in which he investigated the differences between human societies and how they should "promote the uninhibited progression to the common good".

Wolff's formal address to the University of Halle in which he claimed that Chinese ethics and Christian ethics were not fundamentally different, that happiness need not have a religious basis.

Haywood married, at an extremely young age, Valentine Haywood, a middle-aged clergyman. She appears to have left him in order to pursue a career on the stage and to support herself by writing. In 1721 she revised The Fair Captive, by a Captain Hurst, for Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre. Haywood soon grew to dislike the stage and she went on to write at least 70 novels, producing as many as ten in one year (1724). Haywood was attacked by Pope and Swift called her a “stupid, infamous, woman”. She went on to found The Female Spectator, the first periodical to be written by a woman.

On the basis of this text Houtteville was elected to the Acad‚mie Fran‡aise. He became permanent secretary of the Acad‚mie in 1742. Houtteville published R‚ponse de M. l'abb‚ Houtteville … M*** au sujet de quelques difficult‚s faites sur le livre de ?La religion chr‚tienne prouv‚e par les faits? (Reply on the Subject of Some Difficulties Concerning ?The Christian Religion Proved by the Facts?) in the same year 1722 and published a revised edition in 1741. These attempts to silence his critics, which included Voltaire, were not successful.

French Dominican missionary who served in French West Indies (1694-1705).

Marivaux became engrossed in the battle between the ancients and moderns, devising a number of arguments against the ancients, especially Homer. His earlier plays were tragedies, but later wrote comedies, and produced many plays for the Comedie-Française. He was saved from financial ruin by Helvétius and Madame de Pompadour. He was harshly treated by the generation of writers who followed him, who used the term ‘Marivaudage’ to describe his affected style of writing. Marivaux published the short-lived periodical Le Spectateur français.

A dramatic monologue in three acts.

Steele’s last and most successful comedy, performed at Drury Lane, where Steele was made a commissioner in 1714, and considered to be his finest play.

Untitled piece.

A Lucretian inspired poem, written in 1722 for Mme de Rupelmonde but not published until the 1730’s. The poem loudly condemns the God of Christainity.

Although The Religion of Nature Delineated was published in 1724 a few copies were circulated in 1722 "as a private monument of one that meant well". The work proved to be so popular that eight editions were published by 1750. The sixth edition published in 1738 was the first to included a Preface, containing a General Account of the Life, Character, and Writings of the Author.

A large part of the third edition, published in 1725, was set up by Benjamin Franklin while working as a compositor in London during his first visit there. In his autobiography he states that he arrived in London in December 1724 and “immediately got work at Palmer’s a famous printing house .... where I was employed in composing Wollaston’s ‘Religion of Nature.’ Some of his reasonings not appearing to me well founded, I wrote a little treatise entitled ‘Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.’ It occasion’d my being more considered by Mr. Palmer as a young man of some ingenuity.” The Religion of Nature Delineated, unlike much of the deistical writing of the period, is not a work of polemic but an honest and moderate, if perhaps in some aspects a misguided, effort to determine, without recourse to revelation, what a rational man would consider natural religion to be.” E.C. Mossner in Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

An expanded version of the original edition, first published in 1714, The Fable of the Bees appeared during a public controversy over the value of charity. The work’s subtitle, Private Vices, Public Benefits exemplified Mandeville’s view that man is essentially selfish although the interaction of private vices results in public benefit. “Thus every Part was full of Vice,/Yet the whole Mass a Paradise”. Mandeville, in acheiving notoriety, caught the dark side of the public’s imagination in light of the South Sea Bubble scandal. His writings remained influential throughout the century and generated much criticism, as they did for example in Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.

A collection of documents on medieval Italian history, 28 vols. (- 1751).

Series of lectures in which Musschenbroek defended Newton. On a study tour to London in 1717 Musschenbroek met Newton and attended the lectures in experimental physics given by John Theophilus Desaguliers.

A comic opera with music by Rameau.

The play was first performed on the 10th April 1725 at the Com‚die-Fran‡aise. It proved to be more succussful that its first version Mariamne.

Published surreptitiously. An epic poem in honour of Henri IV, later renamed the La Henriade (The Epic of Henry), it was published in England by subscription in 1728, with a dedication to Queen Caroline. It could not appear in France due to its many condemnations of religious fanaticism.

Begun in 1685 but not published, according to Burnet’s own wishes, until six years after his death. It finally appeared in 2 volumes between 1724 and 1734 with omissions made by his two sons. Burnet has often been charged with misrepresentations, especially in his account of the birth of James, the Old Pretender.

Burnet as Professor of divinity at Glasgow (1669-74); he was strongly anti-Catholic and fled to Holland on the accession of James II. Burnet counseled William and Mary, accompanied them to England (1688), and preached their coronation sermon. He became the Bishop of Salisbury (1689) and was influential at court during the life of Queen Mary; his pamphlet defending the Broad-Church position, the Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles (1699) offended the High-Church; as a member of an ecclesiastical commission appointed, after Mary' s death, to distribute vacant church livings, he devised the scheme known (after 1704) as Queen Anne’s Bounty. Author of History of the Reformation (3 Volumes, 1679-1714).

A defence of the Cartesian model of the Universe. Castel, a Jesuit scientist, went on to attack Voltaire’s Eléments de la philosophie de Newton.

Published with a Preface entitled An Apology for Free Debate and Liberty of Writing. The Discourse was written ostensibly in opposition to William Whiston’s attempt to show that the books of the Old Testament originally contained prophecies of events in the New Testament which had been corrupted by the Jews and that the fulfillment of prophecy by the events of Christ’s life was “secondary, secret, allegorical and mystical”. Collins’s work provoked at least 35 rejoinders, including those by Samuel Clarke, Arthur Sykes and Biship Edward Chandler. Collins replied with Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered in 1727. Holbach translated and published a French edition in 1768.

Published between 1724 and 1728.

A guide-book which appeared in three volumes between 1724-6.

In which Duguet criticises the papal bull Unigenitus (8 September 1713) for violating the rights of conscience.

Fiddes defines moral truth as consisting in the contemplation of the moral perfections of the divine nature, the rule and model of perfection to all other intelligent beings.

Written sometime between 1691 and 1699.

A work, appearing between 1724 and 1727, which contained an attack on Newton. Hutchinson taught that the Hebrew scriptures contained a complete system of natural science and theology for which he gained many followers (known as Hutchinsonians who in 1756 were attacked for their sermons against reason and religion). In his commentary on the Creation and the flood in Genesis, Hutchinson claims that “the Hebrew language was form’d by God”, and that the Bible has always been misunderstood by ignorant scholars who have never grasped the true meaning of the Hebrew language. His critique of Newton won the approval of a group of Oxford dons and theologians and celebrated by the poet Christopher Smart in his Jubilate Agno, A Song from Bedlam, a poem which was not published until 1939.

Hutchinson was given a private education in mathematics and mechanics. He made experiments and wrote on the bible and scientific matters (collected works, 12 vols., 1748-49) whilst working as a family steward and then in 1728 as riding purveyor to the master of the royal horse.

Influential work, published in 2 volumes, based on Lafitau's work as a missionary at the Caughnawaga settlement of Mohawk Iroquois, at Sault Saint Louis, on the southern shore of the Saint Lawrence River.

Published between 1724 and 1726; included an attack on Clarendon.

Dialogues of a libertine, a form which became popular during the period of the Regency.

Published between 1724 and 1725, a series of letters purportedly written by M.B., a Dublin linen-draper, attacking the monopoly granted by the English government to William Wood to provide the Irish with a copper coinage.

A play dedicated to Mme de Prie, it was first performed at the Com‚die-Fran‡aise on 18th August 1725.

Atkins served as a British naval surgeon.

The Discourses were republished in 1726 with an appendix, God Not the Author of Evil.

A poem attacking some of the leading authors of the time, including Swift and Pope. Later in his Dunciad, Pope had a dig at Cooke. For his translation of Hesiod into rhymed couplets Cooke became knowed as “Hesiod Cooke”; from 1741 he edited The Craftsman.

A celebration of the business ethic and mercantile values (thrift, energy, self-help, etc.)

A defence of deism

Francis Gastrell was Bishop of Chester; he was appointed Boyle lecturer in 1697, with The Certainty and Necessity of Religion in general; or the first Grounds and Principles of Human Duty Established, published in 1697, with a continuation in 1699. In 1708, the anonymous work Principles of Deism truly represented was published, with the above essay against freethought and deism, also anonymous, in 1725; the preface mentions “A few Copies of this Discourse were printed about seven Years ago, and communicated only to some particular Friends of the Author, ...” This was Gastrell’s last work.

Weekly publication in which Gottsched aimed to demonstrate that literature's role was to lead to the betterment of individuals and society at large. It appeared between 1725 and 1726.

Gottsched reputation has never recovered from Lessing's comments published on 16 February 1759 in the seventeenth of his famous Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend (Letters concerning the Most Recent Literature); after citing the claim of another contemporary writer about Gottsched: ??No one will deny that the German theater has Professor Gottsched to thank for much of its initial improvements, ?? Lessing continued in his own words: ?I am this No One; I absolutely deny it. It would have been preferable had Mr. Gottsched never been mixed up with the theater. His ostensible improvements either concern dispensable trivialities or represent actual turns for the worse.?

Haywood imitated the style of Delarivière Haywood by writing novels based on contemporary scandal. In the Memoirs she appended a key in which society leaders were denoted by initials; the British Museum has a copy giving their full names.

Appeared as two treatises; revised editions, Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design and Inquiry Concerning Moral Good and Evil were published in 1726.

An essay in eroticism published by Montesquieu for his friends at court.

Muralt was a Pietist from Bern. "England is a Country of Liberty . . . every one lives there as he wishes . . . it is in England that a Man is Master of his own, without the Oppressions of the Great, or ever knowing them, if he thinks fit."

Published posthumously.

De Saussure was a young French Protestant from Switzerland who wrote a series of letters to his family while living in England during the period 1725-29. The letters were admired by Voltaire.

Scienza Nova appeared in new editions in 1730 and 1744, and was translated as The New Science of Giambattista Vico in 1949.

“.... throughout the years between 1728 and 1785 the vogue of his Logick in institutions of higher learning does not appear to have slackened. When Jeremy Bentham attended Queens College, Oxford, in the first three years of the 1760’s, the Logick was still in use as the standard English treatise in its field; but Bentham regarded it as ‘Old woman's logic,’.... Dr. Johnson said of the Logick that it ‘has been received into the universities, and, therefore, wants no private recommendation.’” Howell, Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric.

Woolston’s first intervention in the deist controversy in which he denied the proof of God from miracles, and called in question the resurrection of Christ and other miracles of the New Testament.

Published between 1725 and 1728, a collection of well-received verse satires.

A defence of ethics based on reason rather than revelation drawing on arguments concerning the nature of man and of the world rather than the divine imperative. Although the Sermons were written before The Analogy of Religion (1736), they did not become a classic in ethical theory until a century or so after the author’s death.

Upon the death of Queen Anne in 1714, Law became a Nonjuror a cleric who refused to swear allegiance to the new monarch, George I. As a result, he was dismissed from his fellowship at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and became a tutor to the sons of friends. By 1727 he was in residence with the family of Edward Gibbon at Putney as tutor to his son Edward, father of the historian. After 1740 he lived in retirement at King’s Cliffe.

A tract to which John Dennis offered an effective rejoinder in The Stage Defended.

Includes a defence of the benefits of red-light districts.

Text book for the teaching of natural science. Six further versions were published, the last of which, the Introductio ad philosophiam naturalem (1762) appeared posthumously in two volumes and remained a standard work for a long time. Some of these versions were translated into English, French, German, and Swedish, and van Musschenbroek also prepared a Dutch edition (1736) especially intended for the layperson who could not read Latin. An English edition was published in 1744 as The Elements of Natural Philosophy, Chiefly Intended for the Use of Students in Universities.

Published between 1726 and 1728. Rollin was an important exponent of educational reform and his Treatise proved to be extremley popular throughout the eighteenth century.

The book was originally published as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World . . . , by Lemeul Gulliver. It is not clear when Swift began Gulliver’s Travels. It has been suggested that the idea for the book dates from the meetings of the Scriblerus Club, a group of Tory writers which included Swift, Pope, Gay and Arbuthnot. From Swift’s correspondence it is known that he was writing in earnest by 1721 and had finished the whole by August 1725. Swift had not been in England since 1714, but in 1726 he returned with a manuscript of the work designed, as he said in a letter to Pope (29 Sept. 1725), to “vex the world rather than divert it”. He visited Pope at Twickenham, where he as joined by other Scriblerians, and where he completed arrangements for publication. Gulliver’s Travels appeared on 28 October after Swift had left for Dublin. It was immediately succussful.

After Richelieu, Mazarin and Louis XIV had deprived the nobility of political power Boulainvilliers reasserted their supremacy by claiming that the nobles were descended from the conquering Franks.

Volume 2 was published in 1738. Before 1800 they went through over 100 editions and appeared in London, York, Edinburgh, Dublin, Newcastle, Paris and Philadelphia.

Another weekly publication in the manner of Die vernnftigen Tadlerinnen (1725) which appeared between 1727 and 1729.

Vegetable Staticks, which dealt with the nutrition of plants and plant physiology, was the first of the two volume work Statickal Essays, which contributed greatly to the advance of botany and chemistry. The second volume, Haemastaticks (1733), embodies his research on the mechanics of blood flow. Hales also worked on methods for the ventilation of ships and large buildings, techniques for determining ocean depths and processes of food preservation.

A Dissenting minister, Lardner was a biblical and patristic scholar; he founded the modern school of critical research in early Christian literature. Credibility was his chief work. Lardner was alarmed by Woolston’s scepticism. He found himself involved in public controversy with Edward Waddington, Bishop of Chichester, when he refused to support the use of the law against Woolston.

Journal that was published in 1727.

Popular novel modeled on F‚nelon's T‚l‚maque. The expanded edition of 1730, in which Ramsay responded to his critics, was translated into English by Alexander Pope's friend Nathaniel Hooke.

Four volumes compiled with the assistance of Pope and published between 1727-32.

Two essays Voltaire published just prior to the publication of La Henriade in 1728. They appeared on 6 December 1727 and were published in the Strand by Nicolas Pr‚vost, an exiled French Huguenot. In the Preface Voltaire announces that he will soon be publishing "an account of my journey in England", that is, the Letters Concerning the English Nation.

Published anonymously, an anti-Catholic and anti-deist tract which Warburton later disowned by buying up and destroying unsold copies.

Woolston published six Discourses on miracles between 1727 and 1730 of which 30,000 copies were reportedly sold. As a result of publication Woolston was tried in 1729 and sentenced to pay a fine, with imprisonment until paid, and also to a year’s imprisonment and to give security for his good behaviour during his life. Unable to give security Woolston remained in confinement until his death on 27 January 1733.

Woolston extended Collins argument against the credibility of the prophecies of the Old to the New Testament; the miracles supposedly performed by Jesus are ludicrous romances, the Virgin was human not divinely pure and the Resurrection is plainly “the most notorious and monstrous Imposture, that ever was put upon mankind”. Speaking through the transparent disguise of a rabbi, Woolston concluded that the only consequence sensible Christians could draw from a careful reading of the New Testament was to “give up their Religion as well as theirChurch.”

Voltaire drew upon a number of Woolston’s arguments and recalled late in life that “no one before him had taken boldness and offensiveness this far. He treated the miracles and the Resurrection of our Saviour as puerile and extravagant stories. He said that when Jesus Christ converted water into wine for the guests who were already drunk, he must have been making punch.” Lettres à S. A. Monseigneur de Prince de * * * *. (1767)

The manuscript “Voltaire 8o 221” of the National Library of Saint-Petersborg contains a French abridged translation of Woolston’s Six Discourses on the Miracles of Our Savior (1727-1729), with a commentary by the translator (probably the marquise Emilie Du Châtelet).

15 volumes published between 1728-53. Voltaire called it a “bad novel” and in the Philosophical Dictionary wrote of Berruyer as “the greatest innocent I have ever known”.

Brooke was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. In 1724 he went to London to read law and became friendly with Pope and Lord Lyttleton; he had already met Swift in Ireland. A philosophical poem, Universal Beauty maintains that “the beauty of the universe is the expression of the Divine order immanent in all creation”. Composed a year after the death of Newton, Brooke writes: “Yet infinite that Work, beyond our Soar, Beyond what Clarkes can prove, or Newtons can explore”. It has been suggested that the poem influenced Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden

The Cyclopaedia appeared in two folio volumes; it met with considerable success and three further editions were published, the fourth appearing in 1741. The projected translation of this work into French formed the basis for the Encyclopédia

One of Defoe's proposals was the establishment of a London University.

A poem marking the accession to the throne of George II in 1727. Desaguliers was a scientist and popular lecturer in mechanics and optics. He also devised improvements to Thomas Savery’s steam engine and between 1719-22 served as grandmaster of British Freemasons.

This ballard opera was an instant success. The piece was said to have made ‘Gay rich and Rich (the theatre manager) gay’. The so-called Newgate pastoral, with music by the German composer Pepusch, satirized the London underworld, amd corruption in general. It was also read as an attack on the ruling party of Sir Robert Walpole, who retaliated with the Licensing Act of 1737, restricting the activities of the theatre.

Formed the bases of Ausfhrliche Redekunst (Comprehensive Rhetoric) which appeared in 1759.

Law’s most popular work which became a classic. It presented the Christian ideal of the ascetic life in terms of self-denial, humility and self-control. The book deeply influence the Evangelical Revival.

Law also wrote The Spirit of Prayer (1749), The Spirit of Love (1752) and The Way to Divine Knowledge (1752).

Lobo, a Portuguese, entered the Society of Jesus in 1609, was ordained in 1621 and from 1622 served as a missionary in India and Ethiopia. His manuscript account of his travels was translated into French as 1728. In 1735, in the Preface to his translation of the Voyage to Abyssinia, Samuel Johnson praised Lobo’s refusal to pander to his reader’s “romantic sensibility,” and for remaining in the realm of the probable: “Here are not Hottentots without religion, polity, or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all sciences.”

Published posthumously, a work in which Newton set out to settle problems surrounding biblical chronology.

Essay by Oldys, antiquarian and biographer, published in the Universal Spectator.

“This spirit of freedom he demonstrated in his own poetry, by shaking off the manacles of rhime: this spirit he extended more universally to the sentiments of others, by publishing a discourse upon the liberty of the press; this spirit he advanced even to government itself, against the sovereignty of one man: and this spirit he exerted against the bands of matrimony, for confining us so inseparably to one woman.”

A work which connects Newton with the political state. It became one of the most successful popularizations of Newton’s theories.

"Religion in England, in towns, and even in the smallest villages finds its expression in hospitals for the sick, homes of refuge for the poor and aged of both sexes, schools for the education of the children." (Quoted in Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (2000), London, p. 15)

In an attempt to revive tragedy, Brutus, begun in London and accompanied by a Discours à milord Bolingbroke, met with little success. The play, written first in English, centered on the Roman proconsul who sentenced his two sons to death for treason. Voltaire later revised the play and it was first staged on 11 December 1730 with a paying audience of 1500. It only ran for a further fifteen performances though it was revived on the French stage after the Revolution.

The Second Edition with Corrections and Amendments.

In the Sermons Butler proposed that true morality consisted in living in accordance with the principles of self-love, benevolence and conscience.

Dodsley’s first published work, with a preface and postscript ascribed to Daniel Defoe. In 1735, with help from his friends, for example, Pope lent him £100, Dodsley set himself up as a publisher at the ‘Tully’s Head’ in Pall Mall, London. Dodsley published most of Johnson’s works and helped to finance his dictionary. Dodsley also went on to found several literary periodicals: the Museum (1746-47, 3 vol.); The Preceptor: First Principles of Polite Learning (1748, 2 vol.), with an introduction by Johnson; the World (1753-56, 4 vol.); and the Annual Register (1758- ), with Edmund Burke as editor.

Sequel to The Begger’s Opera, banned by the Lord Chamberlain, although it was available by subscription.

Haller most important poem which took as its subject the contrast between the simple life within natural surroundings and the articifical life within cities.

A riposte to Pope’s attack on Haywood in the The Dunciad where he satirized her as a “Juno of majestic size. With cow-like udders, and with ox-like eyes”, her sexual favours were offered as the prize in a urinating contest.

A work which clearly influenced Adam Smith and Veblen due to its central argument that vice is the behaviour that alone promotes profitable economic activity.

A record of Middleton’s observations made during a visit to Rome on the pagan origin of church ceremonies. Middleton took part in some of the 18^th century pamphlet wars; at this time he was accused of unorthodoxy and refrained from writing on theological matters. Earlier, in 1921, he was found guilty of libel against Richard Bentley.

Translated into English by Andrew Motte.

Influenced by the work of Anthony Collins, Sherlock abandoned any pretense of a literal interpretation of the bible. With Francis Hare and Andrew Snape, Sherlock was one of Hoadly’s principal enemies in the Bangorian controversy. He acceded to the Bishopric of Bangor in 1727 and the Bishopric of Salisbury in 1734.

First English translation. A copy was found in Benjamin Franklin’s library, a collection that was used for reference by the framers the American Constitution.

An ironic letter of advice in which a public-spirited citizen suggests that conditions could be alleviated if children were used for food.

Voltaire was denied permission to dedicate the poem to Louis XV and refused a privilege, a guarantee of royal permission to print the work. The poem was therefore printed in Rouen and an edition of 4000 copies was secretly circulated in Paris. In March 1728 Voltaire published a luxury edition in London after securing 343 subscribers. He dedicated this edition to Queen Caroline, wife of George II.