Catalogue of Manuscripts relating to Voltaire
Dr Zoe Screti, Astra Foundation Research Fellow in Manuscript Studies, is working on the
Catalogue of Manuscripts relating to Voltaire, establishing the data model for the catalogue,
identifying fields for inclusion, and considering how best to link the catalogue to the wider
Digital Voltaire project.
Postdoctoral Research Projects
Left: Zoe Screti in the Voltaire Lab (photography ©Keiko Ikeuchi)
Right: CMV in development
CMV (Catalogue of Manuscripts relating to Voltaire /
Catalogue des manuscrits relatifs à Voltaire) is a digital
union catalogue that brings together international
collections of Voltaire manuscripts, uniting records of
these manuscripts in the same place for the first time.
Begun in October 2022 and generously supported
by the Astra Foundation, the project will result in
an open-access, fully searchable resource that will
significantly impact Voltaire scholarship by enabling
new discoveries to be made, and fresh connections
between sources to be drawn.
The catalogue will contain approximately 20,000
entries for manuscripts produced by, or relating to,
Voltaire. These include a wide variety of sources from
repositories across the world and include such diverse
items as Voltaire’s abundant correspondence, drafts
and copies of his works, diary entries by third parties
detailing meetings with Voltaire, commonplace books
including quotes from Voltaire’s works, and even a
Jamaican almanac. Standardised typologies have
been employed throughout to enhance searchability,
maintain consistency, and enable users to filter results
efciently, and it is hoped that this will result in a
resource that prioritises user experience.
CMV pushes the boundaries of what a manuscript
catalogue is, moving beyond traditional bibliographic
entries to include information on often neglected, but
nevertheless crucially important, aspects of archival
materials such as marginalia, watermarks and signs
of use. In doing so, the catalogue seeks to support
a variety of research needs, from ambitious big-
data visualisations to the most microscopic studies
of the materiality of the text. The catalogue also
provides direct links to archival repositories and digital
resources, works symbiotically with the Voltaire Library
Database, and will link to Digital Voltaire at a later stage.
The catalogue website will feature a host of additional
resources and data visualisations of particular interest
to teachers and students, such as videos demonstrating
the processes of letter locking and guides to
understanding 18th-century handwriting. CMV will
therefore be a crucial starting point for established
researchers working on Voltaire and the 18th century,
as well as an informative introduction to Voltaire, the
Enlightenment and manuscript culture.
We are working closely with Staltech Europe Ltd to
develop the back-end data entry system and the front-
end user interface, with the catalogue being launched
at the Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes (ITEM)
in Paris in March 2024. We would like to thank the
donors who have made possible the building of this
resource: the Astra Foundation, and the John Fell Fund,
University of Oxford.
6 | VOLTAIRE FOUNDATION ANNUAL REPORT 2022/23