This landmark of the romantic movement not only greatly influenced the taste and morality of the eighteenth-century reading public but was also one of the most seminal and widely read literary works of its day. Seventy-two editions of the novel in French appeared between 1761 and 1800, and though Voltaire called its success one of the infamies of the century. It won for Rousseau a place beside the author of Candide as a director of European though