You may wonder what Rousseau is doing here. He was a philosopher born in Geneva in 1712 and his ideas dragged the French revolution into more mainstream political thought. He also wrote Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (Julie or the New Heloise) on the ancient medieval story of Heloise and Abelard about which I will write separately as we have a copy in the Charlecote Library. Schopenhauer thought that was one of the four greatest novels ever written. (The others were Tristram Shandy, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Don Quixote. ) Among all his other attributes Rousseau became a botanist and in 1770 he moved to Paris and set up a correspondence with a Mme Delessert in Lyon to enable her daughters to understand the elements of Botany. They were not published in his lifetime but received great acclaim when they became published and we have the English translation by Thomas Martyn – the corrected and improved third edition.