Émile

More about the book

This philosophical romance, called by Lord Morley "one of the seminal books" and by others "the child's charter", has an Introduction by André Boutet de Monvel, Professor of French Literature, Institut Français du Royaume-Uni. The work "has been the inspirational source of every great reformer since the eighteenth century", says Professor Boutet de Monvel; but its influence has extended far beyond the confines of education, and its effect upon the ideas of several generations has covered a much wider sphere. "Émile" became indeed one of the major textbooks of the French Revolution and of European Romanticism, and Mirabeau ranked it among the masterpieces of that age. [From the inside cover of the dust jacket]