Title (historiated border, three-compartment): CAMEO CLASSICS | {rule} | CANDIDE | BY | Voltaire | WITH ILLUSTRATIONS | BY | Mahlon Blaine | {rule} | GROSSET AND DUNLAP | NEW YORK ||
Pagination: [1-6] 7-144, total 144 pages; frontispiece plus 4 plates within collation, head- and tailpieces – reproductions of Mahlon Blaine’s pen drawings.
Binding: 21 x 14 cm, cream cloth with the cameo of Johann Gutenberg to front cover, gilt lettering to front cover and spine, in acetate dust jacket, in a pictorial slipcase.
Arouet, François-Marie [Voltaire] (French, 1694 – 1778)– author.
Woolf, Herman Irwell [Chambers, Dorset] (British, 1890 – 1958) – translator.
Blaine, Mahlon [Hudson, G. Christopher] (American, 1894 – 1969) – illustrator.
Grosset and Dunlap (NY) – publisher.
J. J. Little & Ives Company (NY) – printer.
Cameo Classics series was published by Grosset & Dunlap (New York) in 1935 – 1948 as a cheap reprint of illustrated classic editions, in this case – of Williams, Belasco and Meyers publication of Candide in 1930 (see LIB-2792.2021). The Cameo Classics books had a clear, acetate dust jacket and were boxed in a buckram alligator skin patterned slipcase with an illustrated cover. The price per volume started at 69 cents and was gradually lowered to 59 and 50 cents per volume by the late 1930s.
Candide was translated into English quite a few times, starting from Tobias George Smollett (British-Scottish, 1721 – 1771) and up to today’s translators. For some reason, the translator’s name is almost never indicated. This translation, published by Williams, Belasco and Meyers in 1930 and reprinted by Grosset and Dunlap in c. 1935, was performed by Herman Irwell Woolf under the pseudonym of Dorset Chambers and first published in London by F.B. Neumayer in 1919. This edition was mentioned in the letter from Joseph Conrad to his son Borys in 1922, May 10.
