Candide

At a glance

1759 philosophical tale by Voltaire.

Author

Voltaire1694–1778

First published

1759

Original language

French

Genre

Humorous fiction

Readers

Adult

Length

Shortunder 40,000 words

Readers' rating

3.8 out of 5from 615 ratings on Hardcover

How long it takes to read

About 2 h 15 min at 250 words a minute, or 3 h 37 min as an audiobook.

Compared with other books

The books closest in length, and a few well-known ones for scale.

1. 1War and PeaceLeo Tolstoy587,287Compare
2. 2The Fellowship of the RingJ. R. R. Tolkien177,227Compare
3. 3Pride and PrejudiceJane Austen121,970Compare
4. 4Harry Potter and the Philosopher's StoneJ. K. Rowling76,944Compare
5. 5The Great GatsbyF. Scott Fitzgerald47,094Compare
6. 6Love and FreindshipJane Austen33,714Compare
7. 7The Austere AcademyLemony Snicket33,697Compare
8. 8CandideVoltaire33,693
9. 9FlatlandEdwin Abbott Abbott33,546Compare
10. 10UndineFriedrich Heinrich Karl Freiherr de La Motte-Fouqué and Charlotte M. Yonge33,179Compare

Counted from the text

Automated estimates from the selected Project Gutenberg text; it may include a preface or notes.

Words in the text

35,815

Dialogue

51%of the words are inside quotation marks

Average sentence

18.4 words

Vocabulary

432 different words in every 1,000Distinct words in the sampled text; this does not measure writing quality.

Where the numbers come from

The word count comes from the sources below.

• standardebooks.orgword count
• gutenberg.orgword count
• openlibrary.orgcover and record
• wikidata.orgdescription and author
• hardcover.appreaders' rating

The word count is Standard Ebooks’ count of its edition; the figures under “Counted from the text” are Musael’s own count of the Project Gutenberg text.

Checked on 2026-10-27. Page counts change from edition to edition. Cover from Open Library; the edition shown may differ.

Questions