Candide by Voltaire
Francois Marie Arouet subtitled his novel Candide, “or Optimism”, when he published it in France in 1759 under his pen name, Voltaire. It is written in the style of a travelogue, with the protagonist, Candide, descending from life in paradise to one of pessimistic disillusion, despite his guide’s mantra that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Through the book, Voltaire spears all forms of authority, including religion, government in all forms, the military, philosophers, and theologians. The book is written around contemporaneous events including the Seven Years War and natural disasters in Europe.
The book was published in secret in France, attaining great popularity and the condemnation of the Roman Catholic Church and the Court of the French King. Although its source was widely believed to have been Voltaire, to whom irreverence was as natural as breathing, he denied authorship until 1768, to avoid being thrown into the Bastille by one of the offended nobles. The book remained officially banned by the Catholic Church as late as 1966.
Throughout the world, the book was considered to be inciting revolution, disrespectful of all forms of authority, and seditious. It was also considered to be obscene, blasphemous, and in some characterizations bordered on libelous. Many of the Founder’s in America read it, Benjamin Franklin met with its author during his tenure in Paris, and Jefferson had a copy in French in his library at Monticello. English editions of the work were published the same year as the original, and have been reprinted ever since.
Candide remained on the officially banned list of the Catholic Church for nearly two centuries, where it joined several other works by Voltaire, as well as works by Daniel Defoe, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence, and Walt Whitman, to name just a few. This did not ban its sale in the United States, other than in Catholic bookstores, and it kept it from the library shelves in Catholic schools. The book was banned by community libraries and schools throughout the United States, and remains so in some jurisdictions, although it is seldom if ever taught or read below the university level.
As recently as 1929, the US government, which had banned shipment of the book through the US Mail from time to time throughout its history despite its seminal effect on revolutionary thought, banned a shipment of the book written in French from importation. US Customs in Boston confiscated the shipment because the official who reviewed it deemed the book obscene, despite it being intended for a French class at Harvard. The book was later admitted by court order, but not in time to be used in the intended class.