Book description
Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, The Confessions is
an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712-78) argued passionately against the inequality he
believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. In his Confessions he
relives the first fifty-three years of his radical life with vivid
immediacy - from his earliest years, where we can see the source of his
belief in the innocence of childhood, through the development of his
philosophical and political ideas, his struggle against the French
authorities and exile from France following the publication of mile.
Depicting a life of adventure, persecution, paranoia, and brilliant
achievement, The Confessions is a landmark work by one of the greatest
thinkers of the Enlightenment, which was a direct influence upon the
work of Proust, Goethe and Tolstoy among others.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712. Abandoned by his
father at the age of ten, he left the city in 1728 and from then on
wandered Europe, searching for happiness. In 1732 he settled for eight
years at Les Charmettes, remembered in his book Confessions. In 1741
he moved to Paris where he met Diderot, in the meantime fathering five
children, all of whom he abandoned. His corwning achievement is his
work of political philosophy, The Social Contract, which was published
in 1762. He died in 1778.
J. M. Cohen, a Cambridge graduate, was the author of many Penguin
translations, including versions of Cervantes, Rabelais and Montaigne.
He died in 1989.
