Amazon.com description: Product Description: This philosophical romance called by Lord Morley 'one of the seminal books' and by others 'the child's charter,' has a new introduction by Andre Coutet de Monvel, Professor of French Literature, Institut Francais du Royaume-Uni. The work 'has been the inspirational source of every great educational reformer since the eighteenth century,' says Proffesor Boutet de Monvel but its influence has extended far beyond the confines of education, and its effect upon the ideas of several generations has covered a much wider sphere. Emile became indeed one of the major textbooks of the French Evolution and of European Romanticism, and Mirabeau ranked it among the masterpieces of the age.