Some early English editions of Voltaire

Abstract

• ON Friday 10 May 1726 it would seem that Voltaire left Calais in the Betty to cross the Channel by the regular service and to arrive the following morning, 30 April, at Gravesend. The shift from Gregorian to Julian calendars, only removed by England's adoption of New Style some twenty-six years later, was probably the least of his worries. Forced to leave France he must have crossed in a very different frame of mind from that of his friend Bolingbroke who had returned from his exile in France under a year previously.