ROUSSEAU JEAN-JACQUES: (1712-1778) French Writer and Philosopher.

An interesting autograph manuscript, unsigned, one page, 4to, n.p., n.d. (c.1746), in French. The page of manuscript, with a couple of alterations in Rousseau's hand, is from his unpublished work relating to the history of women which he prepared between 1746-51 for his benefactress Louise Marie Madeleine Dupin. Rousseau writes his text in the right column of the page, the left reserved for additional notes, the present manuscript annotated in his hand 'Ordonn[ance]: des R[ois] de Fr[ance]…p.205'. In his text Rousseau writes regarding King Philippe le Long of 1317, stating '…by letters given to the Abbess…of Cusset, who previously had given to the King half of the Justice and duties that they had and received in their village during the fairs…granting them that the Abbess will in future decide on her own behalf of belongings and not him nor any successor King will be able to remove such right.´ VG

Philip V (c.1292/1293-1322) King of France and Navarre 1316-22, known as 'Philippe le Long'.

Cusset is situated in the department of Allier, Auvergne, close to Vichy, in the central region of France. The Abbess Rousseau refers to was the superior of a female community of nuns from the Order of St. Benoit.
Rousseau's political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment in France and across Europe. His sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise (1761) was of importance to the development of romanticism in fiction and his Discourse of Inequality (1754) and The Social Contract (1762) are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. During the period of the French Revolution Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophes among members of the Jacobin Club. Rousseau was interred as a national hero in the Pantheon in Paris in 1794, sixteen years after his death.