Reveries of the Solitary Walker

• Rousseau's last great work, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, is part reminiscence, part meditation, as the philosopher seeks to come to terms with his isolation and find happiness in solitude and nature.
• The Reveries are an important complement to Rousseau's other philosophical and autobiographical works and address many of the same issues, making it a useful introduction for anyone interested in reading Rousseau for the first time.
• A new translation that marries accuracy with readability.
• The Introduction discuss the nature of the work and places it in its historical, literary, and intellectual contexts. It considers the Reveries alongside Rousseau's other autobiographical work, notably the Confessions, and the form and style of the text in the context of the history of lyrical prose narratives, the rise of Romanticism, and works about walking.
• Detailed explanatory notes enable readers to appreciate to the full Rousseau's ideas, ranging from biographical details to literary allusions, philosophical contexts, and the routes around Paris where Rousseau walks.

Readership: General readers interested in Rousseau, life-writing/autobiography, nature and the environment, the experience of an individual finding himself; students of French literature/studies, the Englightenment and literature of ideas, European (pre-) Romanticism, comparative courses on autobiography, the history of European political thought, walking in literature.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Russell Goulbourne has previously translated Diderot's The Nun for Oxford World's Classics.