Work · Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism
Confessions
Twelve books on his life up to 1765, written 1765–1770 and published after his death (1782 and 1789): he means to show a man “in all the truth of nature” – including the ribbon he stole and blamed on a young servant, and the five children he left at the foundling hospital.
Introduction
Rousseau began the Confessions in 1765, after his publisher Marc-Michel Rey had urged him to write his memoirs, and finished them in 1770. The first six books follow his childhood in Geneva, his flight from the city in 1728 and his years with Madame de Warens; the last six cover his life in Paris, his fame and his quarrels with Diderot, Grimm and Madame d’Épinay, up to his departure from the Île Saint-Pierre in 1765. From the first page he claims an undertaking without precedent, the portrait of a man “in all the truth of nature”, and an early draft of the preface criticises Montaigne for painting himself only in profile. When he read from the manuscript in Paris salons in 1770–71, Madame d’Épinay asked the lieutenant of police to stop the readings. Published after his death in 1782 (Books I–VI) and 1789 (Books VII–XII), the book is often regarded as a founding text of modern autobiography.
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Connections
Criticizes
- Essays1580 · Michel de Montaigne
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