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 Candide and Other Stories by Voltaire |
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Brief Description Candide is the most famous of Voltaire's 'philosophical tales', in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. This edition includes four other prose tales - Micromegas, Zadig, The Ingenu, and The White Bull - and a verse tale based on Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale,: What Pleases the Ladies. |
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Author Profile Francois-Marie Arouet, writing under the pseudonym Voltaire, was born in 1694 into a Parisian bourgeois family. Educated by Jesuits, he was an excellent pupil but one quickly enraged by dogma. An early rift with his father--who wished him to study law--led to his choice of letters as a career. Insinuating himself into court circles, he became notorious for lampoons on leading notables and was twice imprisoned in the Bastille. By his mid-thirties his literary activities precipitated a four-year exile in England where he won the praise of Swift and Pope for his political tracts. His publication, three years later in France, of Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais (1733)--an attack on French Church and State--forced him to flee again. For twenty years Voltaire lived chiefly away from Paris. In this, his most prolific period, he wrote such satirical tales as Zadig (1747) and Candide (1759). His old age at Ferney, outside Geneva, was made bright by his adopted daughter, Belle et Bonne, and marked by his intercessions in behalf of victims of political injustice. Sharp-witted and lean in his white wig, impatient with all appropriate rituals, he died in Paris in 1778--the foremost French author of his day. |
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Synopsis '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. |
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Table of Contents Candide; Micromegas; Zadig; The Ingenu; The White Bull; What Pleases the Ladies |
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