CANDIDE

New York: Random House, 1975. 50th Anniversary Edition, Book Club Variant. Hardcover. very good . ROCKWELL KENT. Quarto, 111, [ii] pages, embossed red cloth covers; with a publisher's facsimile slipcase.

This is a facsimile editioin of the first book published by Random House, whose logo was designed by Kent. This edition has an additional 3-page Bibliographical Note by Charles Edmund Merrill, Jr., in 1929 explaining that this reprint edition has all of Kent's illustrations in the 1928 RH edition, with some minor changes in the translation from the French. This edtion has a new Publisher's Note. "For the optimistic, innocent Candide, and his equally guileless if more worldly-wise mentor, Dr. Pangloss, and their delicious adventures, still command our attention. The folly of philosophic and religious optimism is displayed with a vigour and wit that carries the reader away. Irony without exaggeration, a perfect restraint in its admirable humour, a gift for the 'hrowaway line' ('pour encourager les autres' is a classic example); all these show Voltaire's style and originality at their incomparable best --PRINTING AND THE MIND OF MAN, 204." Random House and a Book-of-the-Month Club issued this, in multiple bindings (at least two), of which this is the BCE.