The letter features a poem titled ‘L’homme inutile’.

The manuscript’s present whereabouts are unknown.

The manuscript’s present whereabouts are unknown.

The letter contains a copy of a poem by Voltaire titled: ‘Aux princesses de Prusse Ulrique et Amélie.’ The manuscript’s present whereabouts are unknown, and it is presumed destroyed.

It is likely that the poem formed part of a letter to Frederick II of Prussia.

The current location of this manuscript is unknown. It was first published by Gaston de Villeneuve-Guibert in Le Portefeuille de madame Dupin (Paris, 1884), p.309-314. Villeneuve-Guibert claimed that the text he published was based on an eight-page autograph manuscript that he had in his possession. The manuscript passed at auction in 1951 and has not re-emerged.

This copy differs significantly from the published version and could have been produced for a musician.

This is the first known draft of the majority of the first part of Doutes nouveaux. The present whereabouts of the MS is unknown, but Theodore Besterman owned a photocopy of it.