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Candide: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions) Paperback – April 15, 2016

by Voltaire (Author), Nicholas Cronk (Editor)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 119 ratings
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Candide has been delighting readers since 1759 with its satiric wit, provocations, and warnings.

The novella has never been out of print and has been translated into every conceivable language. The text of this Norton Critical Edition remains that of Robert M. Adams’s superlative translation, accompanied by explanatory annotations.

The Norton Critical Edition also includes:
· A full introduction by Nicholas Cronk.
· Six background studies of Enlightenment ideas and themes (by Richard Holmes, Adam Gopnik, W. H. Barber, Dennis Fletcher, Haydn Mason, and Nicholas Cronk), five of these new to the Third Edition.
· Seven critical essays―five of them new to this edition―representing a wide range of approaches to Candide. Contributors include J. G. Weightman, Robin Howells, James J. Lynch, Philip Stewart, Erich Auerbach, and Jean Starobinski.
· A revised and expanded Selected Bibliography.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    280 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    April 15, 2016
  5. Dimensions
    5.1 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0393932524
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0393932522
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

An excellent translation with helpful footnote information and background information. And at a most affordable price for students.--W. M. Howe, Blue Mountain Community College

About the Author

Nicholas Cronk is Director of the Voltaire Foundation, Professor of French Literature, and Lecturer in the History of the Book at Oxford University. He is General Editor of the Complete Works of Voltaire as well as editor or co-editor of many publications. His current research project is Voltaire's Radical Enlightenment: Editing and Re-Interpreting the Lettres sur les Anglais, for which he has been awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship (2015―17).

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Third edition (April 15, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393932524
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393932522
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.1 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 119 ratings

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
119 global ratings
More In-Depth than the Signet Classic standard version
4 Stars
More In-Depth than the Signet Classic standard version
The Norton critical edition provides much more historical and philosophical commentary than standard editions such as the Signet, which I have also read. This edition is probably designed for a college course on Voltaire and/or Enlightenment era novellas, due to the essays attached to the original text to explore themes such as the philosophy of the garden, the Romance conventions, and the issue of Optimism. The best part of this edition are the footnotes, without which many 21st century readers would miss Voltaire’s satire and criticism of some of his contemporaries, and even figurative jabs at his rivals.
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Top reviews from the United States

Mary
5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2016
Verified Purchase
If you like philosophical thought, this is a must! Voltaire, in the story of Candide uses entertaining and thought-provoking irony to explore Gottfried Leibniz' philosophy of Optimism. Whatever is... is for the best.
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Joy H
4.0 out of 5 stars More In-Depth than the Signet Classic standard version
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2023
Verified Purchase
The Norton critical edition provides much more historical and philosophical commentary than standard editions such as the Signet, which I have also read. This edition is probably designed for a college course on Voltaire and/or Enlightenment era novellas, due to the essays attached to the original text to explore themes such as the philosophy of the garden, the Romance conventions, and the issue of Optimism. The best part of this edition are the footnotes, without which many 21st century readers would miss Voltaire’s satire and criticism of some of his contemporaries, and even figurative jabs at his rivals.
Customer image
Joy H
4.0 out of 5 stars More In-Depth than the Signet Classic standard version
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2023
The Norton critical edition provides much more historical and philosophical commentary than standard editions such as the Signet, which I have also read. This edition is probably designed for a college course on Voltaire and/or Enlightenment era novellas, due to the essays attached to the original text to explore themes such as the philosophy of the garden, the Romance conventions, and the issue of Optimism. The best part of this edition are the footnotes, without which many 21st century readers would miss Voltaire’s satire and criticism of some of his contemporaries, and even figurative jabs at his rivals.
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2 people found this helpful
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Vairagya Eiger
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2016
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A fast paced satire that makes one think!
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RunMaine
4.0 out of 5 stars Satirical Genius
Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2017
Verified Purchase
Voltaire is a satirical genius, he leaves few stones unturned in this short novel. The critical responses are useful resources if you have to write a report for the book or need further insight into Voltaires mind.
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Adam
1.0 out of 5 stars Print on demand copy
Reviewed in the United States on January 10, 2021
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POD copy with smeared ink.
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Jas
1.0 out of 5 stars Poor not for kids under 18
Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2020
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Poor written book and vulgar language
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tqwert1
2.0 out of 5 stars Baffling, infuriating failure by the editor to do basic, required parts of his job
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2022
Verified Purchase
Candide's a fun book. I hadn't read it since high school 30+ years ago but and remembered nothing specific about the story, but I always remembered Pangloss and his 'all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds' (like most people who have read Candide probably) and have habitually all my life since used 'Panglossian' as in speaking and writing as short hand for oblivious optimism. So it was enjoyable to go back through the actual full story, and read most of it as new to my memory. Actually, given what stuck with me all the years since first reading it, I was quite surprised to realize that Pangloss himself doesn't actually appear in the book until near the very end after Candide has already finished almost all of his crazy descent into the depths of human suffering across three continents.

So Candide itself was great, and the translation provided here was excellent as best as I can tell just judging from how it reads as a non-French speaker. But the text of Candide only makes up about 1/3 of this book. Since it is so short (80 pages in this edition), 2/3 of the Norton critical edition is critical essays. And that is where the editor proved to be so infuriatingly useless. First, essentially no background material is provided. Most Norton editions I've read (and I've read a bunch of them recently) provided extensive historical materials -- reviews written at the time the work was actually published, selections from other works that were key influences on the book or were being responded to in some way by the book, responses of later great writers --things like that, which are usually quite interesting. The only actual background of that sort in this Norton Candide is one short letter by Voltaire to a newspaper reviewer of Candide, in which he puts on a fake identity and claims it was actually his brother who wrote Candide. It's pretty funny, and worth including for sure. But how is this the ONLY bit of background material the lazy Norton editor managed to find? Surely Candide was widely written about and reviewed at the time of its release and was certainly read by and written about by many great writers of fiction and philosophy since. There is a lengthy section that is called 'Backgrounds' in the table of contents, but aside from Voltaire's prank letter none of it actually is. It's all just recent criticism, substantively indistinguishable in the nature of the analysis from the essays actually in the 'Criticism' section. Having those essays is fine in itself, and a couple are among the best critical essays included, but not if the editor uses them to paper over his failure to include any actual background material.

The lack of background materias is a serious editorial failure that damages the value of the Norton edition compared to most others. But it's not the editor's worst sin of omission. Every critical article in the 2/3 of the book after the actual text of Candide (whether notionally in the 'Backgrounds' or 'Criticism' sections) has numerous quotes in French. Everything written by a French writer, Voltaire himself or a modern critic the essay is responding or otherwise, is quoted in French. And there is NO TRANSLATION OF ANY OF THE FRENCH BY THE THIRD EDITION NORTON EDITOR!!!! In fact, the only essay with translation of French text is one where the editing was done (and presumably just copied and pasted) by the editor of the prior SECOND Norton critical edition. Why does 3rd edition editor Nicholas Cronk assume that everyone reading an English translation of Candide can speak French? Is he just ignorant? Was he too lazy to provide translations? Is he an arrogant fool who thinks that anyone who doesn't speak French is unworthy of thinking about Candide? Whatever the reason, having every quoted piece of French text that the essay writers are directly responding to in their essays be incomprehensible to me as someone who doesn't speak French made substantial sections of this book -- way more substantial than in most Norton editions because of how small a proportion of the book the short actual text of Candide itself makes up -- of little value to me.

Considering that the only critical essay with translations in this third Norton edition had the translations provided by the second edition Norton critical edition editor, my advice if you don't speak French is to avoid the 3rd edition and instead read the 2nd edition if it is even still available anywhere.
10 people found this helpful
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