Étienne Noël Damilaville

Étienne Noël Damilaville
Buste présumé d'Étienne Noël Damilaville, Marie-Anne Collot ; Musée du Louvre.
Born	21 November 1723 Bordeaux
Died	13 December 1768(1768-12-13) (aged 45) Paris
Occupation	Encyclopédiste

Étienne Noël Damilaville 21 November 1723 – 13 December 1768) was an 18th-century French man of letters, friend of Voltaire, Diderot and d'Alembert.^[1] He served in various military and administrative functions of the Ancien Régime.^[2] He was a member of the bodyguard of King Louis XV, and then a senior civil servant in the tax office responsible for supervising the Vingtième. His official roles meant that his correspondence was unexamined by censors, enabling him to circulate letters between leading thinkers of the day,^[3] most particularly during the Sirven affair.

The Encyclopédie

Damilaville authored three articles in the Encyclopédie - Population, Peace and The Vingtième.

Friendship with Voltaire

Voltaire regarded him as a very close friend, and wrote him at least 539 letters over eight years.^[4] They only actually met, for the first time, after they had been corresponding for five years, on 20 August 1765, when Damilaville visited Ferney.^[5]

Opinion of Damilaville was not universally positive: Melchior Grimm said of him

' He had neither grace, nor mental wit, and he lacked the worldly savoir-faire which makes up for it. He was sad and heavy, and his lack of basic education always showed through. '^[6]

References

Bibliography

• Emmanuel Boussuge et Françoise Launay, « L’ami D’Amilaville », Recherches sur Diderot et sur l'Encyclopédie, 2014, n° 49, (p. 25–41).
• Emmanuel Boussuge et Françoise Launay, "Étienne Noël D'Amilaville (1723–1768)", Les collaborateurs de l'Encyclopédie, projet d'Edition Numérique Collaborative et Critique de l'Encyclopédie' (6 January 2015)

External links

• Étienne-Noël Damilaville on data.bnf.fr
• SUDOC 028972244
• Damilaville on Wikisource
• Généalogie des Damilaville.
• Autre publication: article "Paix" de l'Encyclopédie.