The Complete Works of Voltaire presently being published by Oxford's Voltaire Foundation will eventually fill around one hundred and fifty large volumes. Alongside his historical and philosophical writings (most famously the Letters on the English Nation or Philosophical Letters), his epic poems and neoclassical tragedies (both generally derivative and mediocre), the biographical studies and the fifty volumes of his correspondence (like George Sand a century later Voltaire knew and corresponded with all of note) will be the philosophical short stories (contes pbilosopbiques) with which Voltaire's name is most frequently associated. ……

Candide is Voltaire"s greatest and most popular philosophical novel. A bestseller from its first publication in 1759, the story begins with the hero Candide"s expulsion from the Westphalian castle of Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh for making love to the Baron"s daughter, Cunegonde. So begins a series of disastrous misadventures on a fantastic odyssey for Candide, Cunegonde and the incurable optimist,Dr. Pangloss. The author delights and dazzles the reader with his story-telling while educating,challenging and instructing.

INTRODUCTION

PART I

The Castle of Thunder-ten- Tronckh

Running the Gauntlet

Escape into Holland

Pangloss on the Pox

The Death of the Anabaptist

An Auto-da-Fe

Cunegonde Re-found

Cunegonde"s Story

Deaths of the Jew and the Inquisitor

Embarkation for the New World

The Old Woman"s Story- 1

The Old Woman"s Story - 2

The Governor of Buenos Aires

Flight to Paraguay

The Jesuit Baron

The Girls and the Monkeys

El Dora"do - 1

El Dorado - 2

The Dutch Shipmaster

Martin the Manichaean

The Nature of Mankind

A Rich Dark Stranger in Paris

"To Encourage the Others"

Paquette and Friar Giroflee

Senator Pococurante

Supper with Six Kings

Voyage to Constantinople

The Galley-slaves" Stories

Cunegonde Found Again

Philosophy on the Propontis

PART II

Candide Sets out Again

The Hospitable Persian

A Favourite of the Sophi

Candide Loses a Leg

Governor Candide

Candide"s Seraglio

Zirza"s Story

The Abb3 Again

Candide is Disgraced

Pangloss and the Officer

Candide and the Lapp Wife

The Newtonians and the Parricide

Zenoida"s Story

The Wooing of Zenoida

Volhall Intervenes

The Jealous Cun3gonde

Candide Meditates Suicide

The End of Pangloss

The Last of Cunegonde

"Everything is Not Too Bad"