No place (Rouen): No publisher, 1759. Rouen edition. 12mo, 16cm, pp (215) (including 3 page Table at rear, last page numbered 315), bound in modern marbled paper with leather spine label, red page edges. Scattered light foxing, but text is VG+, unworn. Page 195 numbered 105, last signature using smaller type. See Begesco 1441. The earliest edition was printed clandestinely (as were all the early editions) in Geneva by Cramer (299 pp, only perhaps a dozen known copies of the true first). CANDIDE was published more or less simultaneously in five countries no later than 15 Jan., 1759. Eighteen 1759 French language editions are known today. PMM 204. This famous satire on religious and philosophical (Leibnitz) optimism is Voltaire's best-known work, one of the most famous of the French Enlightenment, and a widely read classic of world literature even today.