Originally published by Cambridge in 1939, this is the masterpiece of Charles Pinot-Duclos (1704–1772) novelist, social historian and Secretary of the Académie, the friend of Rousseau and the forerunner of the social reformers. The Considérations is a penetrating study of eighteenth-century French society, and of the network of moral and psychological ties which compose social existence in any period of civilisation. Professor Green's introduction gives the main facts of the life and work of Duclos.