Immediately after its secretive publication, the book was widely banned because of its religious blasphemy, political sedition, and intellectual hostility hidden under a thin veil of naivety.

It had an especially large effect on the contemporary doctrine of optimism, a philosophical system founded on the theodicy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, which insisted on God's benevolence in spite of such events.

speculating that Voltaire's primary source was the 1755 work Relation historique du Tremblement de Terre survenu à Lisbonne by Ange Goudar.

This idea is probably based on a misreading of the 1885 work La Vie intime de Voltaire aux Délices et à Ferney by Lucien Pereyand Gaston Maugras.

[31] The La Vallière Manuscript, the most original and authentic of all surviving copies of Candide, was probably dictated by Voltaire to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière, then edited directly.

[35] The greatest number of copies of Candide were published concurrently in Geneva by Cramer, in Amsterdam by Marc-Michel Rey, in London by Jean Nourse, and in Paris by Lambert.

In 1761, a version of Candide was published that included, along with several minor changes, a major addition by Voltaire to the twenty-second chapter, a section that had been thought weak by the Duke of Vallière.

[38][39] Voltaire strongly opposed the inclusion of illustrations in his works, as he stated in a 1778 letter to the writer and publisher Charles Joseph Panckoucke: Je crois que des Estampes seraient fort inutiles.

Only Pangloss, Candide, and the "brutish sailor" who let Jacques drown[49] survive the wreck and reach Lisbon, which is promptly hit by an earthquake, tsunami, and fire that kill tens of thousands.

The old woman reciprocates by revealing her own tragic life: born the daughter of Pope Urban X and the Princess of Palestrina, she was kidnapped and enslaved by Barbary pirates, witnessed violent civil wars in Morocco under the bloodthirsty king Moulay Ismaïl (during which her mother was drawn and quartered), suffered constant hunger, nearly died from a plague in Algiers, and had a buttock cut off to feed starving Janissaries during the Russian capture of Azov.

[52] After a few more adventures, Candide and Cacambo wander into El Dorado, a geographically isolated utopia where the streets are covered with precious stones, there exist no priests, and all of the king's jokes are funny.

The pair continue their journey, now accompanied by one hundred red pack sheep carrying provisions and incredible sums of money, which they slowly lose or have stolen over the next few adventures.

Although both appear happy on the surface, they reveal their despair: Paquette has led a miserable existence as a sexual object since she was forced to become a prostitute, and the monk detests the religious order in which he was indoctrinated.

"[57] Candide, Pangloss, Martin, Cunégonde, Paquette, Cacambo, the old woman, and Brother Giroflée all set to work on this "commendable plan" (louable dessein) on their farm, each exercising his or her own talents.

European governments such as France, Prussia, Portugal and England are each attacked ruthlessly by the author: the French and Prussians for the Seven Years' War, the Portuguese for their Inquisition, and the British for the execution of John Byng.

[10] The story does not invent or exaggerate evils of the world—it displays real ones starkly, allowing Voltaire to simplify subtle philosophies and cultural traditions, highlighting their flaws.

[64][65] A number of archetypal characters thus have recognisable manifestations in Voltaire's work: Candide is supposed to be the drifting rogue of low social class, Cunégonde the sex interest, Pangloss the knowledgeable mentor, and Cacambo the skillful valet.

This view is to be compared to a reading that presents Voltaire as advocating a melioristic philosophy and a precept committing the travellers to improving the world through metaphorical gardening.

Roy Wolper, professor emeritus of English, argues in a revolutionary 1969 paper that Candide does not necessarily speak for its author; that the work should be viewed as a narrative independent of Voltaire's history; and that its message is entirely (or mostly) inside it.

At least once, Candide was temporarily barred from entering America: in February 1929, a US customs official in Boston prevented a number of copies of the book, deemed "obscene",[92] from reaching a Harvard University French class.

[11] William F. Bottiglia opines, "The physical size of Candide, as well as Voltaire's attitude toward his fiction, precludes the achievement of artistic dimension through plenitude, autonomous '3D' vitality, emotional resonance, or poetic exaltation.

Candide, then, cannot in quantity or quality, measure up to the supreme classics" such as the works of Homer or Shakespeare, Sophocles, Chaucer, Dante, Cervantes, Fielding, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Racine, or Molière.

[98] Candide has influenced modern writers of black humour such as Céline, Joseph Heller, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, and Terry Southern.

Mark Kamrath, professor of English, describes the strength of the connection between Candide and Brown's Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799): "An unusually large number of parallels...crop up in the two novels, particularly in terms of characters and plot."

Armand Mattelart, a French critic, sees Candide in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, three canonical works of the genre.

[106] This work is attributed both to Thorel de Campigneulles, a writer unknown today, and Henri Joseph Du Laurens, who is suspected of having habitually plagiarised Voltaire.

[109] Many lyricists worked on the show, including James Agee, Dorothy Parker, John Latouche, Richard Wilbur, Leonard and Felicia Bernstein, and Hellman.

Proponents of one say that Candido is very similar to Candide, only with a happy ending; supporters of another claim that Voltaire provided Sciascia with only a starting point from which to work, that the two books are quite distinct.

[115] Terry Southern, in writing his popular novel Candy with Mason Hoffenberg adapted Candide for a modern audience and changed the protagonist from male to female.

Here was that deceptively simple, smoothly flowing, lightly prancing, impishly ironic prose that only he could write; here and there a little obscenity, a little scatology; everywhere a playful, darting, lethal irreverence; if the style is the man, this had to be Voltaire.