Candide, ou L'optimisme. Traduit de l'allemand. De Mr. le Docteur Ralph [With

12mo. pp. 299, f. [1] (blank); pp. 132, ff. [2] (blank). Signatures: A-M¹² N⁶; A-E¹² F⁶. Bound together in modern crimson morocco.

First edition of the spurious sequel; second [first London] edition of the original.

The ‘seconde partie’ of Voltaire’s philosophical novel was the work of either Charles-Claude-Florent de Thorel de Campigneulles (1737-1809) or Henri Joseph Dulaurens (1719-1797), and was issued – with clear intent to deceive readers – with a title page exactly mimicking Voltaire’s, save for ‘SECONDE PARTIE’ in the penultimate line. Said to be the best of the Candide take-offs, it continues the benighted hero’s adventures in the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Denmark. It gently mocks Leibnitz, Descartes and Newton, and less gently Pascal. The first London printing of Voltaire’s own text (see A. Morize (ed.), Candide (Paris, 1913), 59x; I.O. Wade ‘The First Edition of Candide’, Princeton University Library Chronicle, 20 (1959), pp. 74 ff., 2; G. Barber’s bibliographical supplement to the Voltaire Foundation edition of Candide (1980), pp. 88-89, 299l) was set by John Nourse in April 1759 from proof-sheets sent out sequentially – at Voltaire’s request – from Cramer in Geneva, where the original edition was being set and printed. This arrangement has resulted, fortuitously, in the preservation of an uncancelled passage at p. 242, beginning ‘Candide était affligé’, with aspersions cast on German poets. Voltaire, in Geneva, struck out this paragraph in proof, but Nourse, evidently having received an earlier proof to work with, retained it, while the Geneva edition of course left it out; nor does it survive in any of the other near-contemporary editions of 1759-1760.

Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record for the second edition of the original.

Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record for the spurious sequel.