Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire written by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, first published in 1759. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best (1759); Candide: or, The Optimist (1762); and Candide: Optimism (1947). It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with Leibnizian optimism by his mentor, Professor Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow and painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes Candide with, if not rejecting Leibnizian optimism outright, advocating a deeply practical precept, "we must cultivate our garden", in lieu of the Leibnizian mantra of Pangloss, "all is for the best" in the "best of all possible worlds".
François-Marie Arouet was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his nom de plumeM. de Voltaire, he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—especially of the Roman Catholic Church—and of slavery. Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a French Gothic novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1831. It focuses on the unfortunate story of Quasimodo, the Gypsy street dancer Esmeralda and Quasimodo's guardian the Archdeacon Claude Frollo in 15th-century Paris. All its elements—Renaissance setting, impossible love affairs, marginalized characters—make the work a model of the literary themes of Romanticism.
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, originally titled The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale, though often abbreviated to Rasselas, is an apologue about bliss and ignorance by Samuel Johnson. The book's original working title was "The Choice of Life". The book was first published in April 1759 in England. Early readers considered Rasselas to be a work of philosophical and practical importance and critics often remark on the difficulty of classifying it as a novel.
Geek Love is a novel by Katherine Dunn, published completely by Alfred A. Knopf in 1989. Dunn published parts of the novel in Mississippi Mud Book of Days (1983) and Looking Glass Bookstore Review (1988). It was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Terry Southern was an American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style. Part of the Paris postwar literary movement in the 1950s and a companion to Beat writers in Greenwich Village, Southern was also at the center of Swinging London in the 1960s and helped to change the style and substance of American films in the 1970s. He briefly wrote for Saturday Night Live in the 1980s.
Cunégonde is a fictional character in Voltaire's 1759 novel Candide. She is the title character's aristocratic cousin and love interest.
Candy is a 1968 sex farce film directed by Christian Marquand from a screenplay by Buck Henry, based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, itself based on Voltaire's 1759 Candide. The film satirises pornographic stories through the adventures of its naïve heroine, Candy, played by Ewa Aulin. It stars Charles Aznavour, Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, James Coburn, John Huston, Walter Matthau, and Ringo Starr. Popular figures such as Sugar Ray Robinson, Anita Pallenberg, Florinda Bolkan, Marilù Tolo, Nicoletta Machiavelli, Umberto Orsini, and Enrico Maria Salerno also appear in cameo roles.
Candide is an operetta with music composed by Leonard Bernstein, based on the 1759 novella of the same name by Voltaire. The operetta was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman; but since 1974 it has been generally performed with a book by Hugh Wheeler which is more faithful to Voltaire's novel. The primary lyricist was the poet Richard Wilbur. Other contributors to the text were John Latouche, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Stephen Sondheim, John Mauceri, John Wells, and Bernstein himself. Maurice Peress and Hershy Kay contributed orchestrations. Although unsuccessful at its premiere, Candide has now overcome the unenthusiastic reaction of early audiences and critics and achieved more popularity.
Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane. It published a mix of erotic fiction and avant-garde literary fiction, and is best known for issuing the first printed edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Candy Jones, originally known as Jessica Arline Wilcox, was an American fashion model, writer and radio talk show hostess.
Maurice Girodias was a French publisher who founded the Olympia Press, specialising in risqué books, censored in Britain and America, that were permitted in France in English-language versions only. It evolved from his father’s Obelisk Press, famous for publishing Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Girodias published Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, and works by Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, John Glassco and Christopher Logue.
Candy Loving is an American model. She was Playboy's Playmate of the Month for the January 1979 issue, which made her the magazine's 25th Anniversary Playmate. Her centerfold was photographed by Dwight Hooker.
Lancer Books was a publisher of paperback books founded by Irwin Stein and Walter Zacharius that operated from 1961 through 1973. While it published stories of a number of genres, it was noted most for its science fiction and fantasy, particularly its series of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian tales, the first publication of many in paperback format. It published the controversial novel Candy by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, and Ted Mark's ribald series The Man from O.R.G.Y. Lancer paperbacks had a distinctive appearance, many bearing mauve or green page edging.
Lolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, whom he kidnaps and sexually abuses after becoming her stepfather. "Lolita", the Spanish nickname for Dolores, is what he calls her privately. The novel was originally written in English and first published in Paris in 1955 by Olympia Press.
Pam Rosenthal is a Brooklyn-born author of erotic historical romance novels. Under the pseudonym Molly Weatherfield, she has written erotic novels in the BDSM genre.
Edward M. Langille has been a professor of Modern Languages at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia since 1989. He specializes in the area of Enlightenment studies, and is one of Truro’s leading experts on Voltaire and his works. He is the North American correspondent for Société des études voltairiennes, an international organization that promotes and coordinates research, events and publications relating to Voltaire. Langille also specializes in studies of Acadian culture and history.
Pretty Peaches is a 1978 American pornographic comedy film directed by Alex de Renzy and released during the Golden Age of Porn. The film stars Desireé Cousteau as Peaches, described as "a daffy carefree female who cheerfully plunges through life without any worries." In the film, she has a car accident after attending the wedding of her father and is rendered unconscious. She is found by two men who take advantage of her, before offering to help her when it becomes apparent that she has amnesia.
Mason Kass Hoffenberg was an American writer best known for having written the satiric novel Candy in collaboration with Terry Southern.
Susan Braudy is an American author and journalist.
