Correspondance générale by Helvétius (review)

romain entre barres diagonales (ex: lef), soit en italique sans delimiteurs (ex: e), tout comme les formes graphiques; la confusion est double dans Ie cas du phoneme 'la!' du fait que Ie caractere utilise pour Ie representer a ete considere comme une lettre, ce qui donne '0' (on pense aun autre phoneme) lorsqu'il est imprime en italique. (TERENCE R. WOOLDRIDGE) Helvetius. Correspondance generaIe, vol I, 1737-56 Edition critique preparee par David Smith (directeur), Peter Allan, Alan Dainard, Jean Orsoni. Preface du cornte Charles-Antoine d'Andlau. University of Toronto Press; The Voltaire Foundation 19th. xxix, 361, 8 illus. $47.50 cloth. It has long been observed that no documents are more valuable for an appreciation of the character, life and times of an individual actively involved in the affairs of the day than his private and public correspondence . For the eighteenth century the letters of Rousseau and Voltaire are striking examples of this observation. Although for many years GaudeAdrien Helvetius (1715-71) was not accorded the same status and reputation as his illustrious contemporaries, in recent times the importance of his theoretical contributions to the fields of education and psychology and his role as a precursor of the Utilitarian movement are beginning to be more clearly recognized. It is with great satisfaction, therefore, that we welcome the long-overdue publication of the first of a projected threevolume critical edition of the correspondence of Helvetius and his wife, the former Anne-Catherine de Ligniville d'Autricourt (1722-1800). For those interested mainly in the intellectual, political, and religious controversies that were such a prominent feature of eighteenth-century affairs in France, the 249 letters of this first volume have little to offer, dealing as they largely do with the personal and domestic preoccupations of the two protagonists. I use the term advisedly since this first volume reminds one of nothing so much as the exposition of a novel or play in which the main event, in this case the publication of De l'Esprit (1758) and the consequent commotion, is subtly foreshadowed. The bulk of the letters can be divided into four groups, the largest (over 70) being those written by the petulant and importunate AnneCatherine , 'imprisoned' in a convent in Lorraine, to her aunt, Mme de Graffigny, an eighteenth-century Mme de Sevigne, who eventually rescues her niece, brings her to Paris, introduces her to Helvetius, and, with great relief, brings about the wedding in 1751. Included in this volume are some 50 letters exchanged between Mme de Graffigny and Fran~ois-Antoine Devaux, her friend and almost daily correspondent in Lorraine. These letters provide a mine of information not only about Helvetius and his future wife but also about the social, literary and 460 LETTERS IN CANADA 1982 political affairs of the day. There are also about 50 letters, all written with great affection, from Helvetius to Anne-Catherine after their marriage . Many of these have to do with the illness and eventual death of his father (1755), his dealings with the government and court because of family connections and his position as tax-farmer, and the construction of his new house. The last group consists of 25 letters from Voltaire to Helvetius mainly on the subject of writing literature of which Helvetius was an ardent practitioner. Other correspondents include such notable figures as Nivelle de la Chaussee, Baculard d'Arnaud, Mme du Chatelet, Montesquieu, Palissot, Boulanger, Dumarsais, and a variety of lesser lights. Not only are most of the letters in this volume published for the first time but important emendations have been made to correspondence previously in print. All the letters have been edited according to the most scrupulous editorial principles and practices, and the presentation conforms to the meticulous standards we have come to expect from the Voltaire Foundation and the University of Toronto Press. We await volume two with impatient enthusiasm. (AUBREY ROSENBERG) Anne Srabian de Fabry. ]eux de Miroirs. Saint Paul, La Fontaine, Mao, Genet et Jean-Jacques Rousseau Editions Naaman. 142 In a previous study of Rousseau, Etudes autour de LA Nouvelle He/oise (Editions Naaman 1977), Professor Fabry's gift for intuitive and impressionistic criticism, allied with a profound knowledge...