Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Born in 1868, Evelyn Beatrice Hall was an English writer who often published under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre. She is most closely associated with Voltaire and is best known for The Life of Voltaire (1903), followed by The Friends of Voltaire.

Hall is widely remembered because of a sentence from her writing that has often been mistaken for a direct quotation from Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." She used it as a summary of his attitude, and it went on to become far more famous than many of her books.

Her work focused on literary history and biography, especially the writers and thinkers of 18th-century France. She died in 1956, and although many readers may not know her name at first, her words and her portrait of Voltaire's world have had a lasting influence.