Rousseau cover

Rousseau

Rating 3.7
Word count
1.1M words
Chapters
110

Tags

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Rousseau (Volume 1 and 2) by John MorleyAuthor: Morley, John, 1838-1923,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Nov 15, 2004

Editor's review

This is the first two volumes of John Morley's biography of Rousseau, an early critical biography that still has reference value. Writing as a historian of ideas, Morley traces Rousseau's life and works, setting personal experience and historical context against texts such as The Social Contract, Emile, and the Confessions, helping readers understand the context in which Rousseau's thought took shape. The book's strength lies in criticism marked by the stance and concerns of a Victorian intellectual: readers gain both a biographical thread and a view of how a later thinker engages and argues with Rousseau. As a public-domain ebook, it is easy to search and to cite against the original texts, making it suitable as supplementary material for Rousseau research rather than a first introduction. It is best read as a secondary source with a period perspective, in conjunction with more recent Rousseau scholarship, taking care to distinguish factual narrative from the author's judgments.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Upper-level students and scholars studying Rousseau's thought and eighteenth-century European intellectual history
  • Readers who want to know how nineteenth-century British intellectuals evaluated Rousseau
  • Researchers who need public-domain English biographical material for textual comparison and citation
  • Readers interested in the intellectual-history biography genre who have some English reading ability

Not a good fit for

  • Readers seeking the latest Rousseau scholarship or contemporary academic consensus
  • Readers new to Rousseau who need a concise introductory guide
  • General readers who struggle with English and rely on Chinese translations

Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and the chapter titles of each volume to grasp Morley's narrative framework, then decide which chapters to read closely or selectively.
  2. Read alongside Rousseau's own works (such as The Social Contract and the Confessions), noting differences between Morley's paraphrase and evaluation and the originals.
  3. Mark the author's period biases and value judgments as you read, and cross-check them against more recent scholarship.
  4. You may first read the introductory chapters to understand the book's stance, then move on to the specific accounts of Rousseau's life and works.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. 98
  99. 99
  100. 100
  101. 101
  102. 102
  103. 103
  104. 104
  105. 105
  106. 106
  107. 107
  108. 108
  109. 109
  110. 110

FAQ

Is this book Rousseau's original work or a biography written by someone else?
This is John Morley's critical biography of Rousseau, a secondary study rather than Rousseau's own work. It traces Rousseau's life and comments on his thought and writings from the author's own standpoint and period perspective, and is best used alongside Rousseau's original works.
Which volumes does this book contain? Is the content complete?
According to the source information, this book is a combined edition of the first and second volumes of Morley's Rousseau, covering the first two volumes of that work. It is not the entirety of Morley's study of Rousseau; for the full picture, look for later volumes or other editions, and check the table of contents before reading to confirm the scope.
How difficult is the English? Is it suitable for non-native readers?
This is English prose by a nineteenth-century British scholar, with long sentences and considerable rhetorical elaboration, so it poses some difficulty for non-native readers and requires a good foundation in English reading. Reading with a dictionary and a Chinese translation of Rousseau's works for comparison is recommended; with long sentences, first identify the main clause, then work out the argument.
Why is it said to have a period perspective?
Morley was a Victorian intellectual, and his criticism inevitably reflects the moral concerns and preoccupations of his time; his evaluation of Rousseau may differ from contemporary scholarship. Readers should treat the book's judgments as one view among others, compare them with more recent academic research, and take care to distinguish factual narrative from the author's evaluation.

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About the author

John Morley (1838–1923) was a British statesman, writer and biographer, though public information about the details of his life is limited. Thirty of his works are held in this collection, mainly in the fields of intellectual history and political biography. His three-volume Life of William Ewart Gladstone draws on detailed sources and a restrained style to trace the career of this British statesman, and is an important reference for understanding Victorian politics. He also wrote Diderot and the Encyclopaedists and Voltaire, studies of French Enlightenment figures and their thought. Essays in his Critical Miscellanies deal with the life of George Eliot and eighteenth-century France, showing his wide interests in literary criticism and historical writing. Overall, his work tends toward intellectual biography, with solid material and clear prose that is both scholarly and readable.

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