| Candide, or Optimism | |
| Title Orig: | Candide, ou l'Optimisme |
| Orig Lang Code: | fr |
| Author: | perhaps Thorel de Campigneulles or Henri Joseph Du Laurens |
| Country: | France |
| Language: | French |
| Genre: | Satire, Picaresque novel |
| Release Date: | 1760 |
Candide, or Optimism — Part II is an apocryphal picaresque novel, possibly written by Thorel de Campigneulles (1737–1809) or Henri Joseph Du Laurens (1719–1797), published in 1760.[1] Candide[2] was written by Voltaire and had been published a year earlier (1759). This work was banned, but was popular enough that unauthorized publishers and printers sold it on the blackmarket anyways.[3] The second part was attributed to both Campigneulles - "a now largely unknown writer of third-rate moralising novels;" and Laurens - who is suspected of having habitually plagiarised Voltaire. The story continued with Candide new adventures in the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Denmark.[4] A new scholarly edition with introduction and notes all in French was produced in 2003 by Edouard Langille (see References), and in 2007, Langille also edited Candide en Dannemarc (Candide in Denmark), which takes up the story following Candide, Part II.