The pen is mightier than the sword, exhibit A.
Folio Society; 2015; 203pp; 8to (255x195x25mm); 1kg; bound in blocked grey cloth; in plain grey slipcase; colour and black and white illustrations throughout.
It may be sacrilege, but I think one can trace a direct lineage from Voltaire’s 1759 Candide to modern cultural phenomena such as the popular TV show South Park or Voltaire’s modern day compatriots at Charlie Hebdo. All uphold the best possible tradition of satire: the notion that nobody and nothing should be above reproach. And all embody the principle that mockery is the best foil for assaults on common decency. In this respect, Voltaire’s satirical masterpiece, Candide, is both devastating and hilarious.
Here, I’ll be looking primarily at the fine edition of Candide published by the Folio Society in 2015. At the end of the article I will briefly mention a couple of other interesting editions of this work.
The book, although quite slender, feels incredibly dense, giving it a solid, well-made feel. The front and back boards are particularly rigid, which further contributes to the sense of robustness. The binding is in grey cloth, with a blocked cover design by the illustrator that is embellished with silver foil. It looks nicer in person than in photographs. The spine is blocked with the title (in silver foil) and author (in black), all in a capitalis quadrata style face. It’s a small thing, but I find the spine design quite stylish and it looks great on the shelf! A word of warning, though: the cloth seems to have been printed grey rather than dyed. My experience, therefore, is that it is quite prone to rubbing, leaving the white fibres showing through. My first copy very quickly lost a large patch of its grey colour from the spine. To Folio Society’s credit, they quickly obliged me with a free replacement, which I have now protected beneath a Mylar dust jacket to avoid a repeat of the incident.
The top of the text block is silvered and the binding is sewn. End papers are plain grey. The volume is presented in a plain grey slipcase. The book is printed on Arctic Volume Ivory paper. This is a bright white paper that has a slightly gloss finish. I’m not a great fan of glossy paper in novels, but it’s heavy and opaque, and the brilliant white of the surface shows the illustrations at their best.
Overall, there are a couple of niggles with the production but it’s a nice looking volume that feels worth the £75.00 original retail price. The printing and binding took place in Germany.
The text is translated by Tobias Smollett and set in Garamond. The text is generously spaced on the page and each chapter begins with a two-line drop cap. Julian Barnes was a great pick to introduce this volume and his intro ably whets your appetite for reading the book proper. As hinted above, this novel is remarkably modern despite being more than 250 years old. Candide’s exploits vary from the purely fantastical to the genuinely historical, but are always tongue-in-cheek. The novel is therefore quite entertaining, despite dealing with some fairly sobering episodes.
The book is illustrated by Quentin Blake. Judging by online discussions, Blake’s work can be divisive, but it seems the perfect fit for the quirky spirit of Candide. The illustration is also quite generous: 18 colour illustrations (including the frontispiece) plus an additional 28 black and white line drawings scattered through the text.
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A brief note on other editions
In 2011, the Folio Society published an edition of Candide limited to 1,000 copies, reviewed over at the Folio Society Devotees forum here. The 2015 edition examined above is a non-limited reissue with the same content, albeit different production. The limited edition was bound in Nigerian goatskin leather blocked in gold and printed on Modigliani paper. It was signed by Quentin Blake. The volume was presented in a grey slipcase that was also gilded. The original retail price of the limited edition was £195.00 and it was one of the Folio Society’s fastest-selling editions ever, selling out in around three weeks. The Folio Society also published an earlier edition of Candide in 1948. That edition was bound with marbled boards, used a different translation (by Henry Morely), and had different illustrations (by Kenneth Hobson).
Other interesting editions include the 1973 offering by the Limited Editions Club, the Fritz Kredel illustrated edition from Peter Pauper Press, and an edition by SP Books that bears a copy of Voltaire’s original hand-written manuscript. ■
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