Two Persian travellers, Usbek and Rica, arrive in Paris just before the death of Louis XIV and in time to witness the hedonism and financial crash of the Regency.

In their letters home they report on visits to the theatre and scientific societies, and observe the manners and flirtations of polite society, the structures of power and the hypocrisy of religion.

Irony and bitter satire mark their comparison of East and West and their quest for understanding. Unsettling news from Persia concerning the female world of the harem intrudes on their new identities and provides a suspenseful plot of erotic jealousy and passion.

Click on the links below to listen to an audio guide to Persian Letters by Andrew Kahn of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, who provided the introduction and notes for the new translation of the novel by Margaret Mauldon in Oxford World’s Classics.

A world of scepticism

• By the early eighteenth century two revolutionary theories – Newtonianism and Cartesianism – were fuelling radical thinking about the authority of the Church and the monarchy. This was the world that Montesquieu was born into. Click here to hear more about it. [2:03]
• Montesquieu was born in 1689 to a landed family in Bordeaux. Click here for more on the man and his milieu. [3:30]
• The death of Louis XIV in 1714 ushered in the Regency, a new era of hedonism and also of intellectual tolerance. Click here for more on how this new period made possible a whole range of intellectual speculation and enquiry. [3:24]

Inspiration and publication

• Contemporary travellers’ tales and The Thousand and One Nights are among the possible inspirations for Persian Letters.  But Montesquieu also used the conceit of Persian travellers encountering French culture to illuminate concerns that interested him in his own society. Click here to hear more about Montesquieu’s aims and inspirations.[5:34]
• Though a great French classic, Persian Letters was not originally published in France. It first appeared anonymously in Holland in 1721. Click here to discover why Montesquieu thought it too risky to bring the book out in his native country and who the book’s first readers were. [5:00]

Giving ideas a form

• Persian Letters, written as an epistolary novel, is highly innovative in its form. The genre allowed Montesquieu both to develop a gripping plot and also to explore intellectual ideas. Click here to hear how this literary text functions. [6:16]

• Many of the questions which Montesquieu ponders in Persian Letters remain topical today. These include questions of population control, the regulation of society, whether marriage is an outmoded institution and whether is it right to control our appetites. Click here to hear how Montesquieu invites readers to think about these questions for themselves without ever preaching to them. [5:44]

Enduring appeal

• Persian Letters was a success from the start and became the first great popular work of the European Enlightenment. What accounts for its  appeal? Click here to learn more about the enduring influence of Montesquieu’s spirit of rational enquiry and scepticism. [3:25]