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Born in in Langres, a middling cathedral town in central France about kilometers southeast of Paris, Diderot began life with very little pointing him toward his future as a world renowned writer and intellectual. While still under the tutelage of the Jesuits, Diderot contemplated an ecclesiastical career, a common method of Old Regime social uplift that would have provided him with a regular, salaried life in the manner dreamed for him by his father.

Law was another professional option available to him, but after an unhappy apprenticeship with an attorney, Diderot left this behind as well. He made his way during these years through work as a piece writer in the vibrant but economically constrained world of Parisian publishing. Diderot did, and during these early years he struggled continuously to eke out a minimal existence through occasional work with his pen.

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Money came from journalists who paid him by the word to provide content for their weekly and monthly periodicals. It also earned him a meager payment of three hundred francs. More translation work followed, and while the jobs helped him to increase his public notoriety, they did not make him any more financially secure. His financial hardship was intensified in when he chose to marry the equally poor Antoinette Champion.

The couple gave birth to a daughter soon after their wedding, and while Diderot remained devoted to his wife and child throughout his life, his marriage led his family in Langres to renounce him completely, further increasing his hardship. In the s, amid his continuing poverty and social marginalization, Diderot began to build the career as a writer and intellectual that would make him famous.