Green cloth spine with gilt title and decoration. Tan cloth boards.

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By Voltaire | Classic fiction (pre c 1945)
Published 17/04/2008 by OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS in the United Kingdom as part of the Oxford World’s Classics series    Paperback | 352 pages

‘If this is the best of all possible worlds, then what must the others be like?’Young Candide is tossed on a hilarious tide of misfortune, experiencing the full horror and injustice of this ‘best of all possible worlds’ – the Old and the New – before finally accepting that his old philosophy tutor Dr Pangloss has got it all wrong. There are no grounds for his daft theory of Optimism. Yet life goes on. We must cultivate our garden, for there is certainly room for improvement.

Candide is the most famous of Voltaire’s ‘philosophical tales’, in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. What Candide does for chivalric romance, the other tales in this selection – Micromegas, Zadig, The Ingenu, and The White Bull – do for science fiction, the Oriental tale, the sentimental novel, and the Old Testament. This new edition also includes a verse tale based on Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale, in which we discover that most elusive of secrets: What Pleases the Ladies. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Review: I was expecting this to be a book which required a lot of concentration but it’s one of the easiest books to read you can imagine. An innocent young man journeys around the world in search of love and enlightenment but finds that both are harder to attain than he expected. It’s said to have influenced the French Revolution later in the 18th century by exposing the hypocrisy and cruelty of mankind, though the tale is told in such a charming and innocent way that it doesn’t seem anything like the highbrow read it sounds. All in all, a short book in short chapters which is well worth a read.

François-Marie Arouet (French: 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his pen name Voltaire was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Catholic Church) and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.

Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and even scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. Voltaire was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance and religious dogma, as well as the French institutions of his day. His best-known work and magnum opus, Candide, is a novella that comments on, criticizes, and ridicules many events, thinkers and philosophies of his time, most notably Gottfried Leibniz and his belief that our world is of necessity the “best of all possible worlds”.