The Complete works of Voltaire published by the Voltaire Foundation were begun in 1968 and will be completed in 203 volumes in 2021. In so far as discoveries of manuscripts and editions will continue to be made, this monumental edition is necessarily incomplete. But it is also incomplete in another more profound sense. Eighteenth-century editions of Voltaire present an often unstable version of the text; Voltaire cultivates an open and fluid style, making frequent use of self-quotation, and blurring traditional generic boundaries; Voltaire's characteristically slippery authorial posture, making frequent use of anonymity and pseudonymity, adds further instability to the œuvre. For all these reasons, Voltaire's works present a particular challenge to the critical editor of a print edition – a challenge that perhaps can only be fully met in a digital critical edition.

在伏尔泰全集由伏尔泰基金会发表在1968年开始，将在2021年203卷完成，只要手稿和版本的发现将继续进行，这一里程碑式的版本是不完整的。但它在另一个更深刻的意义上也是不完整的。伏尔泰的 18 世纪版本呈现了文本的一个经常不稳定的版本；伏尔泰培养开放流畅的风格，频繁使用自引，模糊了传统的泛型界限；Voltaire的典型滑作者的姿势，使频繁使用匿名和假名的，进一步增加了不稳定的作品. 由于所有这些原因，伏尔泰的作品对印刷版的评论编辑提出了一个特殊的挑战——这个挑战也许只能在数字评论版中完全解决。