Judith P. Zinsser – författare

Though most historians remember her as the mistress of Voltaire, Emilie Du Chatelet (1706-49) was an accomplished writer in her own right, who published multiple editions of her scientific writings during her lifetime, as well as a translation of Newton's "Principia Mathematica" that is still the standard edition of that work in French. Had she been a man, her reputation as a member of the eighteenth-century French intellectual elite would have been assured. In the 1970s, feminist historians of science began the slow work of recovering Du Chatelet's writings and her contributions to history and philosophy. For this edition, Judith P. Zinsser has selected key sections from Du Chatelet's published and unpublished works, as well as related correspondence, part of her little-known critique of the Old and New Testaments, and a treatise on happiness that is a refreshingly uncensored piece of autobiography - making all of them available for the first time in English. The resulting volume will recover Du Chatelet's place in the pantheon of French letters and culture.

Though most historians remember her as the mistress of Voltaire, Emilie Du Châtelet (1706–49) was an accomplished writer in her own right, who published multiple editions of her scientific writings during her lifetime, as well as a translation of Newton’s Principia Mathematica that is still the standard edition of that work in French. Had she been a man, her reputation as a member of the eighteenth-century French intellectual elite would have been assured.

In the 1970s, feminist historians of science began the slow work of recovering Du Châtelet’s writings and her contributions to history and philosophy. For this edition, Judith P. Zinsser has selected key sections from Du Châtelet’s published and unpublished works, as well as related correspondence, part of her little-known critique of the Old and New Testaments, and a treatise on happiness that is a refreshingly uncensored piece of autobiography—making all of them available for the first time in English. The resulting volume will recover Châtelet’s place in the pantheon of French letters and culture. 

Until recently, the marquise Du Châtelet (1706-1749) was more remembered as the companion of Voltaire than as an intellectual in her own right. While much has been written about his extraordinary output during the years he spent in her company, her own work has often been overshadowed. This volume brings renewed attention to Du Châtelet's intellectual achievements, including her free translation of selections from Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the bees; her dissertation on the nature and propagation of fire for the 1738 prize competition of the Académie des sciences; the 1740 Institutions de physique and ensuing exchange with the perpetual secretary of the Académie, Dortous de Mairan; her two-volume exegesis of the Bible; the translation of and commentary on Isaac Newton's Principia; and her semi-autobiographical Discours sur le bonheur. It is a measure of the breadth of her interests that the contributions to this volume come from experts in a wide range of disciplines: comparative literature, art history, the history of mathematics and science, philosophy, the history of publishing and translation studies. Du Châtelet's partnership with Voltaire is reflected in a number of the essays; they borrowed from each other's writings, from the discussions they had together, and from their shared readings. Essays examine representations of her by her contemporaries and posterity that range from her inclusion in a German portrait gallery of learned men and women, to the scathing portrait in Françoise de Graffigny's correspondence, and nineteenth-century accounts coloured by conflicted views of the ancien régime. Other essays offer close readings of her work, and set her activities and writings in their intellectual and social contexts. Finally, they speculate on the ways in which she presented herself and what that might tell us about the challenges and possibilities facing an exceptional woman of rank and privilege in eighteenth-century society.