Evelyn Beatrice Hall


Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who wrote under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre, was an English writer best known for her biography of Voltaire entitled The Life of Voltaire, first published in 1903. She also wrote The Friends of Voltaire, which she completed in 1906.
In The Friends of Voltaire, Hall wrote the phrase: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" as an illustration of Voltaire's beliefs. This quotation – which is sometimes misattributed to Voltaire himself – is often cited to describe the principle of freedom of speech.

Personal life

Hall was born on 28 September 1868 in Shooter's Hill, Kent, the second of the four children of the Reverend William John Hall, Minor Canon of St Paul's Cathedral, and Isabella Frances Hall. Her elder sister, Ethel Frances Hall, married the writer Hugh Stowell Scott in 1889. Evelyn Hall was to become an important influence in the life of her brother-in-law, with whom she co-authored two volumes of short stories, From Wisdom Court and The Money-Spinner. Upon his death in 1903, Scott left £5,000 to Hall, writing that it was "in token of my gratitude for her continued assistance and literary advice, without which I should never have been able to have made a living by my pen".
Hall never married, and died in Wadhurst, East Sussex, on 13 April 1956, aged 87.