Abstract

A monumental achievement, Maurice Cranston's trilogy provides the definitive account of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's turbulent life. Now available in paperback, this final volume completes a masterful biography of one of the most important philosophers of all time. _The Solitary Self _traces the last tempestuous years of Rousseau's life. "_The Solitary Self_ is a fitting coda to a magisterial work. Cranston... is a compelling stylist who narrates Rousseau's tribulations with a mixture of compassion and dry humor."—Thomas Pavel, _Wall Street Journal_ "Cranston not only recreates for his readers a rounded view of Rousseau himself, he sets it firmly in the social and political context of Europe's _ancien regime_.... An engrossing work of history."—John Gray, _New Statesman_ "Cranston's painstaking archival research and lucid style yield the most detailed and thoroughly documented biography of Rousseau written in English. His epilogue masterfully sums up Rousseau's importance as political philosopher and initiator of romantic sensibilities."—_Choice_ "Anyone curious about the paradoxes of a most paradoxical man will not go wrong by starting with this invaluable biography."—James Miller, _Washington Post Book World_ "As absorbing as a picaresque novel."—Naomi Bliven, _New Yorker_ "A monument of scholarship.... This amazing biography, like Boswell's account of Johnson, recreates the daily life of Rousseau: what he did, who he saw, what he said, what he wrote.... We may be quite confident that we hold in our hands the authoritative account of this life. The definitive Rousseau."—Isaac Kramnick, _New Republic_ Maurice Cranston, a distinguished scholar and recipient of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his biography of John Locke, was professor of political science at the London School of Economics. His numerous books include _The Romantic Movement_ and _Philosophers and Pamphleteers_, and translations of Rousseau's _The Social Contract_ and _Discourse on the Origins of Inequality_