Editing Voltaire (section)

=== Letters ===
Voltaire also engaged in an enormous amount of private correspondence during his life, totalling over 20,000 letters. [[Theodore Besterman]]'s collected edition of these letters, completed only in 1964, fills 102 volumes.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Brumfitt |first=J. H. |year=1965 |title=The Present State of Voltaire Studies |journal=Forum for Modern Language Studies |publisher=Court of the University of St Andrews |volume=I |issue=3 |page=230 |doi=10.1093/fmls/I.3.230}}</ref> One historian called the letters "a feast not only of wit and eloquence but of warm friendship, humane feeling, and incisive thought."{{sfn|Durant|Durant|1967|p=138}}

In Voltaire's correspondence with [[Catherine the Great]] he derided democracy. He wrote, "Almost nothing great has ever been done in the world except by the genius and firmness of a single man combating the prejudices of the multitude."<ref>Massie, Robert K. (2011). Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. New York: Random House. p. 335</ref>