About the Voltaire Foundation

As a research department, our mission is to disseminate world-leading research into the Enlightenment, and to bring the debates of Voltaire and his contemporaries to the widest possible audience. Our newly launched Voltaire Lab pioneers the methodologies of digital humanities in eighteenth-century scholarship with international collaborations.

The Voltaire Studio is now live and contains two open-access digital databases: the Library of Voltaire, which contains records of all books and manuscripts known to have been part of his personal collection, and the Catalogue of Manuscripts (CMV), a digital union catalogue of detailed records of manuscripts in Voltaire's hand, his works, letters and other documents about him.

We have been at the heart of Enlightenment scholarship for over forty years and have an international reputation for stimulating and disseminating the most rigorous and up-to-date research into the eighteenth century. The writings of Voltaire and other eighteenth-century thinkers were seminal in creating the political and social systems of today. Enlightenment thinkers were champions of rational thought, scientific enquiry, intellectual curiosity, and the separation of Church and State, all of which are more relevant now than ever.

We publish the definitive edition of the Complete Works of Voltaire (Œuvres complètes de Voltaire), and together with publishing partner Liverpool University Press, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (previously SVEC), the foremost series devoted to Enlightenment studies with over 700 volumes published to date. The correspondences of several key French thinkers, including Voltaire, Rousseau, Bayle and Helvétius, also feature among our publications.