Voltaire's Candide Published

1759

Anonymously, in Geneva, the old philosophe issued a short novel about an earnest youth beaten, enslaved, and earthquaked across three continents. It mocked Leibniz, optimism, the Jesuits, the Inquisition, and God. Banned everywhere, it outsold everything. 'Il faut cultiver notre jardin,' Candide concluded - perhaps the most famous shrug in literature.