Voltaire

Voltaire was the pen name of François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), the French writer who more than anyone embodied the Enlightenment. Imprisoned in the Bastille and exiled to England as a young man for his satires, he made a fortune through speculation and his pen, wrote tragedies, histories and the Philosophical Letters that praised English liberty at France's expense, and spent years at the court of Frederick the Great before settling at Ferney on the Swiss border. From there he conducted a vast correspondence, campaigned against judicial murder and religious persecution and wrote Candide and the Philosophical Dictionary. He returned to Paris in triumph months before his death.