About the Book: The Confessions
Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, The Confessions is an
astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)
argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to
civilized society. In his Confessions he relives the first fifty-three years of
his radical life with vivid immediacy-from his earliest years, where we can see
the source of his belief in the innocence of childhood, through the development
of his philosophical and political ideas, his struggle against the French
authorities and exile from France following the publication of Emile. Depicting
a life of adventure, persecution, paranoia, and brilliant achievement, The
Confessions is