Zounds: Simon Webb on Voltaire and the Quakers

‘Of his twenty-five letters, no fewer than four are on the subject of Friends.’

by Simon Webb 5th June 2026

Can it really be 300 years since Voltaire began his exile in England, and first encountered Quakers? The celebrated French writer had been beaten up on the orders of one of his enemies, and locked up in the Bastille. Not wishing that to happen again, he came to live in England. This was in 1726, the same year Gulliver’s Travels was published. Voltaire’s Letters on England has some of the surreal quality of Swift’s satirical masterpiece.