Louis Dutens

Louis Dutens (15 January 1730 – 23 May 1812) was a French writer born in Tours, of Protestant parents, who lived most of his life in Britain or in British service on the continent.

He took orders, and was appointed chaplain and secretary to the English minister at the court of Turin in October 1758.

He again went to Turin as chargé d'affaires; and during this second mission he collected and published an edition of the works of Leibniz (Gothofridi Guillemi Leibnitii Opera Omnia, Geneva, 6 vols., 1768) and wrote his Recherches sur l'origine des découvertes attribuées aux modernes (1766).

He was active in civic life beyond the parish and preached the annual sermon to the Charity School of St Nicholas, Newcastle, in 1768.

[1] Between 1775 and 1805, he wrote his Memoirs of a Traveler, Now in Retirement, which contains a wide-ranging miscellany of Dutens' life "interspersed with historical, literary, and political anecdotes relative to the principal personages of the present age".