Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, was the youngest of five children. He studied Latin and Greek at Paris’s esteemed secondary school Lycée Louis-le-Grand and against the wishes of his father, decided he wanted to be a writer. Voltaire produced works in almost every literary form, including essays, plays, novels, poems, and others. Voltaire was frequently imprisoned and exiled for his writings, which often used satire to attack establishments such as the church, due to strict censorship laws of the time. Probably the most influential and incendiary of the French Enlightenment writer’s works was his 1759 satirical novella, Candide.