Voltaire is the pseudonym taken by François-Marie Arouet as a writer and poet in France. The circumstances around Voltaire’s 1694 birth still remain a bit cloudy. While record shows Voltaire and his older brother Armand being raised in the middle-class house of a notary and minor bureaucrat named François Arouet, Voltaire insists throughout his life that his real father was the officer and songwriter Rochebrune. Voltaire’s mother died when he was seven, regardless of who you asked. He gained his education from the Jesuits. Here, his passion for the literary began. Soon he grew to question the philosophy of his teachers, causing the skepticism he is so well known for in his writing to flourish. He soon joined several liberal and radical thinking groups of the time, but these actions soon lead to his banishment from Paris. He began writing elsewhere and, after the success of his first play, Oedipe, he adopted the pseudonym, Voltaire. Soon Voltaire’s writings would grasp the intrigue of even the royals and he would become a court poet to Queen Maria Leszczynska. Being as liberal as he was, Voltaire was constantly embracing the new philosophy and religious thinking that was brought about by Enlightenment thinking. After a bit of time in the Queen’s company, Voltaire found himself exiled to London after getting into a quarrel with a man of nobility over a woman. Depressed by his new surroundings at first, Voltaire would soon come to very much appreciate the English culture. He went on to adopt the language fluently, he met many prominent writers, including Johnathan Swift, and He grew very fond of the tolerance of the English people, specifically Quaker ideals. Voltaire continued his writing in London and was soon well known as a troublesome radical thinker. He was allowed to express his opinion far better in London than he was anywhere else before. This new writing