Department of French

Department of French

   

Cecil Courtney works on French and comparative literature, intellectual history and bibliography, with special emphasis on the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He has written widely on Montesquieu, Burke, Raynal, Isabelle de Charrière, James Boswell and Benjamin Constant. Publications include Montesquieu and Burke (Oxford, Blackwell 1963; reprinted 1975), Benjamin Constant: a bibliography to 1833 (London, MHRA, 1981), Isabelle de Charrière (Belle de Zuylen), a biography (Oxford, Voltaire Foundation 1993) and (as co-editor) the Œuvres complètes of Isabelle de Charrière (Amsterdam, 1979-1984, 10 vols.). He is General Editor of the Correspondance générale of Benjamin Constant (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1993-, five vols. published to date) and a member of the editorial teams working at present on the new edition of the Œuvres complètes of Montesquieu (Oxford and Naples, 1998-, nine vols. published to date) and of the forthcoming critical edition of Raynal's Histoire philosophique des deux Indes. Work in progress includes historical bibliographies of early editions of Montesquieu and Raynal. Cecil Courtney is a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a Corresponding Member of the Académie de Bordeaux and a Vice-President of the Société Montesquieu.