Talk:Voltaire/@comment-2165715-20150704193429/@comment-84.250.162.163-20160718215941

Your French teacher was very obviously bullshitting you. To claim Voltaire was illiterate is on par with insisting Michelangelo was blind from birth, or that Disraeli was mute and had to semaphore his speeches in parliament. Voltaire's personal correspondence, much of it written in his own hand, much of which remains, is among the vastest of the era. He was also a notably voracious reader and critic who would devour books and newspapers - something an illiterate man could scarcely manage. Voltaire did, however, employ secretaries to whom he'd dictate some of his works - a normal arrangement at the time for authors. I'm impressed you were told "his wife" wrote his works as he _never even married_. His trusted personal secretary, however, was Jean-Louis Wagnière. It was Wagnière who committed to writing the original manuscript of Candide, for example. Not so much funny trivia, then; more like made-up connerie.