solitary retreat
Rousseau completed theEmile while living at Mont Louis in Montmorency well outside of Paris. See the Confessions Bk. X.
Although Roussseau's life there was not always as solitary as he claims to have wished, his years at Montmorency were extraordinarily productive. It was at Montmorency that he completed not only Emile (1762) but also Julie or The New Héloise (1761), On Social Contract, (1762), and his "Summary" and "Critique" of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's Project for Perpetual Peace) (1761). Emile remains the classic text for the study of human development and progressive education; The New Héloise was a best-selling novel of the eighteenth century (and remains a staple of many comparative literature courses today); and On Social Contract is considered after Plato's Republic to be the most widely-read work in the history of political thought. Although Rousseau's commentaries on the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's works are less famous than other writings produced during the Montmorency years, they did influence thinking about the prospects for international law at the time of the attempts to establish the League of Nations and have had a seminal role in the development of modern theories about war and peace.
There is presently a Jean-Jacques Rousseau library and museum in Montmorency, and the little dungeon where he did most of his writing remains much like it was in the 18th century.