Bernard de Mandeville was born in or near Rotterdam in 1670, the son of Judith (Verhaar) and Michael de Mandeville, a doctor, as was Michael's own grandfather, also named Michael, who had served as municipal physician and rector of the Latin school in Nijmegen in the southern Netherlands. No portrait of Mandeville is known to exist, and little can be gleaned about the details of his life or character from the few surviving relevant documents. Indeed, considerably more is known about Mandeville's eighteenth-century admirers and critics than of Mandeville himself. While his family name suggests French ancestry, the de Mandeville's were not recent immigrants to Holland but had lived in Leeuwarden in Friesland from at least the late sixteent

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First published 17 October 2002

Citation: Hundert, E. J.. "Bernard de Mandeville". The Literary Encyclopedia. 17 October 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4974, accessed 20 November 2009.]