Candide or the Optimist

Voltaire's 1759 tale, here under its alternate English title, tracks the same Westphalian innocent as he is driven from a baron's household and thrown into the disasters of the Seven Years' War, the Lisbon earthquake, South American missions, and European courts. His tutor's teaching that all is for the best is repeated against hangings, disease, and theft. Candide seeks Cunegonde across oceans, picks up the Manichaean Martin and a servant who has seen El Dorado, and tests every consolation offered him. The work is a philosophical comic narrative in short chapters: a tour of mid-eighteenth-century violence meant to wear out a system of optimism.

Quarter-bound in black buckram with marbled paper covers. Colour printed yellow dust-jacket.