Candide,Used

About the AuthorFranoisMarie 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 fatherwho wished him to study lawled 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 midthirties his literary activities precipitated a fouryear 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 Stateforced 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. Sharpwitted and lean in his white wig, impatient with all appropriate rituals, he died in Paris in 1778the foremost French author of his day.Theo Cuffe translated Voltaires Micromgas and Other Short Fictions for Penguin Classics Product DescriptionVoltaire's Candide is a decidedly playful romp through certain parts of history, satirizing religion, philosophy, and government along the way. The title character is instructed in the concept of optimism, which through the course of the short novel, he finds unraveling about him. When first published, the novel was banned, but it has enjoyed a long life due to its scathing satire on society and the world.