Voltaire et ses sources historiques

Voltaire and his historical sources. History books in Voltaire's personal library amount to 28 % (1.886 vols) of the total (6.814). Voltaire made use of an impressive number of these in writing most of his historical works (The Essai sur les mœurs, the Siècle de Louis XIV, the Histoire de l'Empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand, etc.). The marginal notes and other indications of Voltaire's reading permit a fuller comprehension of his critical method of work. When the Corpus of marginal notes has been published in its entirety, it will be possible to establish the whole range of his sources more accurately and to draw firmer conclusions about Voltaire as an historian.