# Is "Candide, ou l'Optimisme" by Voltaire a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Candide, ou l'Optimisme by Voltaire (Gabriel Cramer, Geneva, 1759) is identified by: Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759. Seventeen editions dated 1759 are recorded, and the date on the title page settles nothing — edition identification is the whole question, exactly as the census says.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759
- The true first is the 299-page edition — Barber's 299G (Morize 59a
- Bengesco 1434) — issued anonymously as 'Candide, ou l'Optimisme, traduit de l'Allemand de Mr. le Docteur Ralph'
- Voltaire's name appears nowhere
- Text points: p
- 103, line 4 reads 'que ce ce fut', the doubled word being corrected to 'que ce fut' in later editions; p
- Publisher imprint reads Gabriel Cramer, Geneva

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Voltaire |
| Publisher | Gabriel Cramer, Geneva |
| Year | 1759 |
| True first | — |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Geneva: Gabriel Cramer, 1759. The true first is the 299-page edition — Barber's 299G (Morize 59a; Wade 1; Bengesco 1434) — issued anonymously as 'Candide, ou l'Optimisme, traduit de l'Allemand de Mr. le Docteur Ralph'; Voltaire's name appears nowhere. Text points: p. 103, line 4 reads 'que ce ce fut', the doubled word being corrected to 'que ce fut' in later editions; p. 125, line 4 reads 'précisément', altered to 'précipitamment' later; p. 31 shows Voltaire's revision removing an unnecessary paragraph break; p. 41 carries his rewritten short sentences on the Lisbon earthquake. The woodcut title ornament of spray, fruit and flowers is repeated at pp. 193 and 266. Chapter XXV (gathering L) does not contain the paragraph attacking contemporary German poets, which Voltaire dropped while the sheets were being printed. The final leaves N7 (a blank) and N8 (instructions to the binder concerning cancellation of the pairs B4/B9 and D6/D7) are frequently absent, having been discarded in binding. No number line, edition statement, printed price or dust jacket applies to the period; contemporary calf is the expected dress.

## Is this the true first?
Seventeen editions dated 1759 are recorded, and the date on the title page settles nothing — edition identification is the whole question, exactly as the census says. The true first is Cramer's Geneva 299-page printing, established by the cumulative analyses of Ira Wade, Giles Barber and Stephen Weissman. Voltaire arranged near-simultaneous issue elsewhere and the counterfeiters imitated Cramer's page layout, spelling and ornaments as closely as they could, so identification runs on the text points and ornament placement above, never on the imprint; regional technical characteristics are what allow specialists to localise each pirate printer. The one edition collected alongside the Geneva first is the London printing (Nourse, 1759), which appeared in May, months after the Geneva printing of mid-January: it preserves an earlier state of the text — set from copy sent to London before Voltaire's last-minute revisions — but is bibliographically later, and is correctly described as the first London edition and an earlier textual state, not as the first edition. The Paris, Lyon and Amsterdam editions dated 1759 are piracies.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue exists for a 1759 imprint. The tells are: the sixteen other 1759-dated editions, which imitate Cramer's layout but fail the text points — 'que ce fut' already corrected at p. 103, 'précipitamment' at p. 125, the title ornament not repeated at pp. 193 and 266; the many later eighteenth-century collected-works printings, in which Candide appears as part of Voltaire's Œuvres rather than separately; and modern facsimiles and illustrated 'first thus' editions of the twentieth century, which are new editions of the text and are identifiable by machine-made paper, modern casing and a modern publisher's imprint.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Candide, ou l'Optimisme* by Voltaire a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/candide-ou-loptimisme
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.