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Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French
satire first published in 1759 by
Voltaire, a
philosopher of the
Age of Enlightenment. It begins with a young man, Candide, who is living a sheltered life in an
Edenic paradise and being indoctrinated with
Leibnizian optimism (or simply
Optimism) by his mentor, Pangloss. The work describes the abrupt cessation of this lifestyle, followed by Candide's slow, painful disillusionment as he witnesses and experiences great hardships in the world. Voltaire concludes with Candide, if not rejecting 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".
Candide is characterised by its sarcastic tone, as well as by its erratic, fantastical and fast-moving plot. A picaresque novel with a story similar to that of a more serious bildungsroman, it parodies many adventure and romance clichés, the struggles of which are caricatured in a tone that is mordantly matter-of-fact. Still, the events discussed are often based on historical happenings, such as the Seven Years' War and the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. As philosophers of Voltaire's day contended with the problem of evil, so too does Candide in this short novel, albeit more directly and humorously. Voltaire ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies, and philosophers through allegory; most conspicuously, he assaults Leibniz and his optimism.
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Image 1Kurt Vonnegut (
VON-ə-gət; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author known for his
satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty-plus years; further works have been published since his death.
Born and raised in
Indianapolis, Vonnegut attended
Cornell University, but withdrew in January 1943 and enlisted in the
U.S. Army. As part of his training, he studied
mechanical engineering at the
Carnegie Institute of Technology and the
University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in
World War II and was captured by the Germans during the
Battle of the Bulge. He was
interned in
Dresden, where he survived the
Allied bombing of the city in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, he married Jane Marie Cox. He and his wife both attended the
University of Chicago while he worked as a night reporter for the
City News Bureau. (
Full article...)
Image 2Ion Heliade Rădulescu or
Ion Heliade (also known as
Eliade or
Eliade Rădulescu;
Romanian pronunciation: [ˈi.on (h)eliˈade rəduˈlesku]; 6 January 1802
– 27 April 1872) was a
Wallachian, later
Romanian academic,
Romantic and
Classicist poet, essayist, memoirist, short story writer, newspaper editor and politician. A prolific translator of foreign literature into
Romanian, he was also the author of books on
linguistics and history. For much of his life, Heliade Rădulescu was a teacher at
Saint Sava College in
Bucharest, which he helped reopen. He was a founding member and first president of the
Romanian Academy.
Heliade Rădulescu is considered one of the foremost champions of
Romanian culture from the first half of the 19th century, having first risen to prominence through his association with
Gheorghe Lazăr and his support of Lazăr's drive for discontinuing education in
Greek. Over the following decades, he had a major role in shaping the modern Romanian language, but caused controversy when he advocated the massive introduction of
Italian neologisms into the
Romanian lexis. A
Romantic nationalist landowner siding with moderate
liberals, Heliade was among the leaders of the
1848 Wallachian revolution, after which he was forced to spend several years in exile. Adopting an original form of conservatism, which emphasized the role of the aristocratic
boyars in
Romanian history, he was rewarded for supporting the
Ottoman Empire and clashed with the
radical wing of the 1848 revolutionaries. (
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Image 3Robert Marshall (January 2, 1901
– November 11, 1939) was an American
forester, writer and wilderness
activist who is best remembered as the person who spearheaded the 1935 founding of the
Wilderness Society in the United States. Marshall developed a love for the outdoors as a young child. He was an avid hiker and climber who visited the
Adirondack Mountains frequently during his youth, ultimately becoming one of the first
Adirondack Forty-Sixers. He also traveled to the
Brooks Range of the far northern
Alaskan wilderness. He wrote numerous articles and books about his travels, including the bestselling 1933 book
Arctic Village.A scientist with a
PhD in
plant physiology, Marshall became independently wealthy after the death of his father in 1929. He had started his outdoor career in 1925 as forester with the U.S. Forest Service. He used his financial independence for expeditions to Alaska and other wilderness areas. Later he held two significant public appointed posts: chief of
forestry in the
Bureau of Indian Affairs, from 1933 to 1937, and head of recreation management in the
Forest Service, from 1937 to 1939, both during the administration of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt. During this period, he directed the promulgation of regulations to preserve large areas of roadless land that were under federal management. Many years after his death, some of those areas were permanently protected from development, exploitation, and mechanization with the passage of the
Wilderness Act of 1964. (
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Image 4Lie Kim Hok (
Chinese: 李金福;
pinyin: Lǐ Jīnfú;
Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Lí Kim-hok; 1 November 1853
– 6 May 1912) was a
peranakan Chinese teacher, writer, and
social worker active in the
Dutch East Indies and styled the "father of
Chinese Malay literature". Born in Buitenzorg (now
Bogor),
West Java, Lie received his formal education in missionary schools and by the 1870s was fluent in
Sundanese,
vernacular Malay, and
Dutch, though he was unable to understand
Chinese. In the mid-1870s he married and began working as the editor of two periodicals published by his teacher and mentor D. J. van der Linden. Lie left the position in 1880. His wife died the following year. Lie published his first books, including the critically acclaimed
syair (poem)
Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari and grammar book
Malajoe Batawi, in 1884. When van der Linden died the following year, Lie purchased the printing press and opened his own company.
Over the following two years Lie published numerous books, including
Tjhit Liap Seng, considered the first Chinese Malay novel. He also acquired printing rights for
Pembrita Betawi, a newspaper based in Batavia (now
Jakarta), and moved to the city. After selling his printing press in 1887, the writer spent three years working in various lines of employment until he found stability in 1890 at a rice mill operated by a friend. The following year he married Tan Sioe Nio, with whom he had four children. Lie published two books in the 1890s and, in 1900, became a founding member of the Chinese organisation
Tiong Hoa Hwee Koan, which he left in 1904. Lie focused on his translations and social work for the remainder of his life, until his death from
typhus at age
58. (
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Image 5Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836
– 29 May 1911) was an English
dramatist,
librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his
collaboration with composer
Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen
comic operas. The most famous of these include
H.M.S. Pinafore,
The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre,
The Mikado. The popularity of these works was supported for over a century by year-round performances of them, in Britain and abroad, by the repertory company that Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer
Richard D'Oyly Carte founded, the
D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. These
Savoy operas are still frequently performed in the English-speaking world and beyond.
Gilbert's creative output included over 75 plays and
libretti, and numerous short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious. After brief careers as a government clerk and a lawyer, Gilbert began to focus, in the 1860s, on writing light verse, including his
Bab Ballads, short stories, theatre reviews and illustrations, often for
Fun magazine. He also began to write
burlesques and his first comic plays, developing a unique absurdist, inverted style that would later be known as his "topsy-turvy" style. He also developed a
realistic method of stage direction and a reputation as a strict theatre director. In the 1870s, Gilbert wrote 40 plays and libretti, including his
German Reed Entertainments, several blank-verse "fairy comedies", some serious plays, and his first five collaborations with Sullivan:
Thespis,
Trial by Jury,
The Sorcerer,
H.M.S. Pinafore and
The Pirates of Penzance. In the 1880s, Gilbert focused on the Savoy operas, including
Patience,
Iolanthe,
The Mikado,
The Yeomen of the Guard and
The Gondoliers. (
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Image 6Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole,
CBE (13 March 1884
– 1 June 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of an
Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authors
Henry James and
Arnold Bennett. His skill at scene-setting and vivid plots, as well as his high profile as a lecturer, brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s but has been largely neglected since his death.
After his
first novel,
The Wooden Horse, in 1909, Walpole wrote prolifically, producing at least one book every year. He was a spontaneous story-teller, writing quickly to get all his ideas on paper, seldom revising. His first novel to achieve major success was his third,
Mr Perrin and Mr Traill, a tragicomic story of a fatal clash between two schoolmasters. During the First World War he served in the
Red Cross on the
Russian-Austrian front, and worked in British propaganda in
Petrograd and London. In the 1920s and 1930s Walpole was much in demand not only as a novelist but also as a lecturer on literature, making four exceptionally well-paid tours of North America. (
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Image 7Ezra Morgan Meeker (December 29, 1830
– December 3, 1928) was an
American pioneer who traveled the
Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon as a young man, migrating from Iowa to the
Pacific Coast. Later in life he worked to memorialize the Trail, repeatedly retracing the trip of his youth. Once known as the "
Hop King of the World", he was the first mayor of
Puyallup, Washington.
Meeker was born in
Butler County, Ohio, to Jacob and Phoebe Meeker. His family relocated to Indiana when he was a boy. He married Eliza Jane Sumner in 1851; the following year the couple, with their newborn son and Ezra's brother, set out for the
Oregon Territory, where land could be claimed and settled on. Although they endured hardships on the Trail in the journey of nearly six months, the entire party survived the trek. Meeker and his family briefly stayed near
Portland, then journeyed north to live in the
Puget Sound region. They settled at what is now Puyallup in 1862, where Meeker grew hops for use in brewing beer. By 1887, his business had made him wealthy, and his wife built a large mansion for the family. In 1891, an infestation of
hop aphids destroyed his crops and took much of his fortune. He later tried his hand at a number of ventures, and made four largely unsuccessful trips to the
Klondike, taking groceries and hoping to profit from the gold rush. (
Full article...)
Image 8Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025) was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the
Latin American Boom.
In 2010, he won the
Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat".
Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as
The Time of the Hero (
La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966),
The Green House (
La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental
Conversation in The Cathedral (
Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various
literary genres, including
literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967
Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986
Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized
nationalism in different parts of the world. (
Full article...)
Image 9Chinua Achebe (; born
Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as a central figure of modern
African literature. His first novel
Things Fall Apart (1958) occupies a pivotal place in African literature and remains the most widely studied, translated, and read African novel. Along with
Things Fall Apart, his
No Longer at Ease (1960) and
Arrow of God (1964) complete the "African Trilogy". Later novels include
A Man of the People (1966) and
Anthills of the Savannah (1987). Achebe is often referred to as the "father of modern African literature", although he vigorously rejected the characterization.
Born in
Ogidi,
Colonial Nigeria, Achebe's childhood was influenced by both
Igbo traditional culture and colonial Christianity. He excelled in school and attended what is now the
University of Ibadan, where he became fiercely critical of how
Western literature depicted Africa. Moving to
Lagos after graduation, he worked for the
Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) and garnered international attention for his 1958 novel
Things Fall Apart. In less than 10 years he would publish four further novels through the publisher
Heinemann, with whom he began the
Heinemann African Writers Series and galvanized the careers of African writers, such as
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and
Flora Nwapa. (
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Image 10
Daguerreotype taken at Mount Holyoke, December 1846 or early 1847; the only authenticated portrait of Dickinson after early childhood
(December 10, 1830
– May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in
American poetry. Dickinson was born in
Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the
Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's home in Amherst. Evidence suggests that Dickinson lived much of her life in isolation. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a penchant for white clothing and was known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even to leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most of her friendships were based entirely upon correspondence.
Although Dickinson was a prolific writer, her only publications during her lifetime were one letter and 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems. The poems published then were usually edited significantly to fit conventional poetic rules. Her poems were unique for her era; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use
slant rhyme as well as unconventional
capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality (two recurring topics in letters to her friends), aesthetics, society, nature, and spirituality. (
Full article...)
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