Reading Order
Rousseau's ConfessionsConfessions Reading Order
Confessions (Les Confessions, written 1765–1770; published posthumously in two parts, 1782 and 1789) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most important and most revolutionary books in the history of Western autobiography — the work that, more than any other, invented the modern understanding of the self as the primary subject of literary inquiry and established the candid revelation of private life as a legitimate literary mode. Rousseau begins with the famous claim: 'I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator. I want to show my fellows a man in all the truth of nature; and this man will be myself.' He then proceeds to give a remarkably frank account of his life from his Calvinist childhood in Geneva through his years as a wandering musician, tutor, and domestic servant, his love affairs, his humiliations, his philosophical awakening in the road to Vincennes in 1749 (where he read the question for the Dijon prize essay and felt suddenly illuminated: 'If ever anything resembled a sudden inspiration, it was the emotion which worked in me as I read this...'), and his eventual fame and his increasingly paranoid sense of persecution. The Confessions did not hesitate to include material that the social conventions of any period would consider damaging: the theft of a ribbon that Rousseau pinned on an innocent servant, his abandonment of his five children to the Paris foundling hospital, his masochistic desire to be spanked by his childhood nurse Mlle Lambercier. The combination of philosophic seriousness and shameless candor was unprecedented and has never been surpassed.
Where to start
Confessions (published 1782–1789) — the Penguin Classics edition translated by J.M. Cohen is the standard English translation; the Oxford World's Classics edition translated by Angela Scholar (2000) is more elegant and more recent. The Confessions is long (twelve books); if reading selectively, Books I–VI (childhood and youth) are the most personal and most famous; Books VII–XII (Paris and celebrity) are more philosophical and polemical.
Complete Rousseau's Confessions Book List
- 1Buy
Confessions (Oxford World's Classics)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (trans. Angela Scholar)·2000·The most elegant modern English translation — Scholar's version captures Rousseau's combination of philosophical grandeur and personal candor; the introduction is the best brief account of the Confessions' place in the autobiography tradition and the questions it raises about sincerity and self-deception. - 2Buy
Reveries of the Solitary Walker
Jean-Jacques Rousseau·1782·The last and most tranquil of Rousseau's autobiographical works, written in the final years of his life as a series of meditations on solitude, nature, and the self — the Confessions in old age, stripped of narrative and reduced to pure reflection; the essential companion to the Confessions for the fullest picture of Rousseau's self-examination. - 3Buy
Confessions (Augustine)
Saint Augustine·398·The foundational predecessor in the autobiography tradition — Augustine's Confessions (4th century) established the form that Rousseau was both inheriting and transforming; where Augustine's confessions are to God, Rousseau's are to the reader; reading both shows the full arc of the autobiographical tradition. - 4Buy
René
François-René de Chateaubriand·1802·The French Romantic text most directly descended from Rousseau's confessional mode — Chateaubriand acknowledged Rousseau as the source of the mal du siècle he was diagnosing in René; reading both shows the direct line from Rousseau's confessional autobiography to French Romantic fiction. - 5Buy
The Prelude
William Wordsworth·1850·The English Romantic poem that is the most important parallel to Rousseau's Confessions — Wordsworth's autobiographical poem about 'the growth of a poet's mind' develops the same project (the self as subject, childhood experience as formative, the natural world as educator) in verse; the two works together define the Romantic autobiography tradition.
Rousseau's Confessions — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Rousseau's Confessions about?
Confessions (published 1782–1789) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most important autobiographies ever written — the work that, more than any other, invented the modern understanding of the self as the primary subject of literary inquiry. Rousseau gives a remarkably frank account of his life from his Calvinist childhood in Geneva through his years as a wandering musician and tutor, his love affairs, his philosophical awakening, and his eventual fame and paranoia. The Confessions did not hesitate to include damaging material: the theft of a ribbon he blamed on an innocent servant, his abandonment of his five children to a foundling hospital, his masochistic desires. The combination of philosophic seriousness and shameless candor was unprecedented.
Why is Rousseau's Confessions important?
Rousseau's Confessions (published 1782–1789) is important for several reasons. First, it invented modern autobiography as a form — before Rousseau, autobiographies were spiritual narratives (Augustine's Confessions) or historical memoirs; Rousseau's claim to show 'a man in all the truth of nature' created the expectation that an autobiography would reveal the inner self without social decorum. Second, the Confessions introduced the idea that childhood experience is formative and that understanding the man requires understanding the child — a psychological insight that influenced Wordsworth, Freud, and the entire tradition of developmental psychology. Third, Rousseau's frank account of his personal failings established the literary convention of confessional candor that runs from de Quincey through Baudelaire to the contemporary memoir.
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