Candide, ou l'Optimisme

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.