L'Orphelin de la Chine

Voltaire reworked the structure of the play in order to fit the classical model of French drama.

[1] Voltaire's source of inspiration was a translation of the traditional Chinese play The Orphan of Zhao by Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare, a French Jesuit missionary who lived in China.

His version of the story changed the play's setting from the state of Jin during the Spring and Autumn period to a locale near the Great Wall coinciding with Mongol conquest of the Southern Song dynasty.

[4] In 1759 The Orphan of China, an adaptation of the original play by the Irish writer Arthur Murphy, was staged at London's Drury Lane.

The play has been translated into Danish, Dutch, English, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.

In the Salon of Madame Geoffrin in 1755 by Anicet Charles Gabriel Lemonnier , 1812. First reading in 1755 of Voltaire's L'Orphelin de la Chine in the room of Madame Geoffrin ,