The Solitary Self

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In this third and final volume of his masterly biography, Maurice Cranston traces the last tempestuous years of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life. From his brilliant authorship of the Confessions , the Dialogues , and the Reveries to his controversial religious views, from his notorious public quarrel with David Hume in England to his clandestine return to France, from his unsettled wanderings to his death in 1778: these and other critical events in Rousseau's most embattled years are detailed in this sympathetic yet balanced portrait. In 1762, with the condemnation of Émile and The Social Contract , harried by both church and state, Rousseau fled Paris, seeking refuge in Neuchâtel and England. Deemed a social outcast and beset by not wholly unwarranted feelings of persecution and abuse, the philosopher turned in despair to the production of autobiographical works intended to reveal his essential innocence and integrity. Through this bitter introspection, Rousseau transformed his solitude into some of the most enduring literature of his time. " The Solitary Self is a fitting coda to a magisterial work. Cranston…is a compelling stylist who narrates Rousseau's tribulations with a mixture of compassion and dry humor." — Thomas Pavel, Wall Street Journal "Cranston not only recreates for his readers a rounded view of Rousseau himself, he sets it firmly in the social and political context of Europe's ancien regime …An engrossing work of history." — John Gray, New Statesman "A monument of scholarship…This amazing biography, like Boswell's account of Johnson, recreates the daily life of Rousseau: what he did, who he saw, what he said, what he wrote.…We may be quite confident that we hold in our hands the authoritative account of this life. The definitive Rousseau." — Isaac Kramnick, The New Republic