Rousseau

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Rousseau Image: Copyright Mary Evans Picture Library

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Jonathan Rée introduces the life and work of the French Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Timeline

1712 28 June - Jean-Jacques Rousseau born in Geneva

1728 fitfully self-educated, and frustrated in his apprenticeship to an engraver, runs away from Geneva. At Annecy he gains the protection of the Baronne de Warens, who sends him to Turin to be officially accepted as a Catholic convert

1731 first visit to Paris, which disgusts him

1740 after eight happy years living with de Warens in Chambéry, and offering music lessons, starts work as a tutor in Lyon

1742 moves to Paris, hoping to make a fortune from a new system of musical notation

1743-4 secretary to French Ambassador to Venice

1745 Rousseau begins his life-long association with Thérèse Levasseur

1746 begins work on the Encyclopedie, edited by Diderot and d’Alembert

1750 publication of prize-winning Discourse on whether the re-establishment of arts and sciences has contributed to the refining of morals (English translation, 1751)

1752 successful performance of his opera, Le Devin du Village, before Louis XV at Fontainebleau

1753 publishes Lettre sur la musique française and embroils himself in controversy over the shortcomings of French music

1755 publication of prize-winning Discourse on the origins of inequality (English translation, 1761); increasing alienation from Voltaire, Diderot, and D’Alembert

1758 Letter to D’Alembert (English translation, 1759)

1761 Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (English translation, 1761)

1762 Social Contract (translation, 1764) and Émile (translations, 1763, 1767); Émile condemned as irreligious by the Parliament and the Archdiocese of Paris, and later by the magistrates of Geneva; Rousseau flees to takes up residence in Neuchâtel

1765 takes refuge on the Ile Saint-Pierre on the Lac de Bienne, and decides to move to England, passing through Paris, where he is lionised

1766 January - accompanied by David Hume, arrives in London, mobbed by crowds; March, moves to Wootton Hall, Staffordshire, works on Confessions; July, denounces Hume as a plotter

1767 May - having completed most of the first volume of the Confessions, flees to Spalding and enters France incognito

1770 returns to Paris under his own name, and gives readings from the Confessions

1776 writes Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, and gives the manuscript to Brooke Boothby, who had been a neighbour in the Peak District (published by Boothby, 1780)

1778 2 July - dies after a stroke

1782 publication of Confessions (part one: I-VI) (English translation, 1783)

1789 publication of Confessions (part two: VII-XII) (English translation, 1790)

READING

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions, translated by J.M. Cohen, Penguin paperback

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Content last updated: 29/07/2005