I Am One Of The People

Catherine the Great wrote her Memoirs (sometimes called Mémoires) in French over several periods of her life, the fullest version composed around the 1790s as a retrospective account of her youth and rise to power. This line appears in that autobiographical text and reflects the intellectual curiosity that defined her self-image: she modelled herself on Enlightenment thinkers and corresponded extensively with Voltaire and Diderot. The Memoirs were not published in her lifetime; multiple manuscript versions survive, and a complete scholarly edition was not available until the 20th century.