(#111084) NAPOLEON APOCRYPHE. 1812-1832. HISTORIE DE LA CONQUETE DU MONDE ET DE LA MONARCHIE UNIVERSELLE ... Nouvelle Edition, Revue et Augmentee. Louis Geoffroy.

NAPOLEON APOCRYPHE. 1812-1832. HISTORIE DE LA CONQUETE DU MONDE ET DE LA MONARCHIE UNIVERSELLE ... Nouvelle Edition, Revue et Augmentee. Paris: Chez Paulin, Libraire-Editeur, 1841. 12mo, pp. [1-6] [1] 2-358 [359-360: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], flyleaves at front and rear, modern blue cloth, red leather spine label. Third edition, revised and expanded. The first printing of this edition with Geoffroy's final revisions. The first alternate history novel, presenting here an imaginary biography of Napoleon which ends with the establishment of a French monarchy that first governs all Europe and later takes over the entire world. "After all the plays, poems and prints of the Napoleonic period, there was little talk of future wars until the events of 1870 directed the attention of the nation to the lost provinces and the great war that must come. For decades after 1815 the absence of any foreign danger was a license for French writers to speculate as fancy suggested. So Louis Geoffroy (1803-1858) took the opportunity to rewrite the course of recent events in his NAPOLEON ET LA CONQUETE DU MONDE (1835), an ingenious work of fiction and an early example of the alternative history. In it, Napoleon did not retreat from Moscow: he turned aside to Saint Petersburg, seized the Czar, restored the ancient kingdom of Poland, and by 1813 ruled all Europe -- save for Britain, Sardinia, and Turkey. In the following year the Emperor finished off the British without any difficulty, although his plan of campaign ignored his main lines of communication. The invasion began with Bernadotte storming north from his bridgehead to capture Norwich, and it ended with Napoleon destroying the main British force, Duke of York commanding, in a great battle at Cambridge on 4 June 1814. The French then entered London. Napoleon would have nothing to do with the British plenipotentiaries, Castelreagh and Liverpool. The Emperor wanted his new subjects to know who was their master; and they learned their future in the Decree of London, a document in which Geoffroy displayed the most admirable malice, great inventiveness, and a sound understanding of imperial ambition ... That was one French way of changing the world for the better." - Clarke, Voices Prophesying War (1992), pp. 18-9. Alkon, Origins of Futuristic Fiction, pp. 129-53. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars 1763-3749 (1992), p. [224] (citing this edition). Versins, Encyclopédie de l'Utopie, des Voyages Extraordinaires et de la Science Fiction, pp. 360-66. Cloth just a bit scuffed, final blank excised by the binder, a tight, clean, internally fine copy. An uncommon book. (#111084).

Price: $750.00

Printing identification statement for this book:
"Nouvelle Edition, Revue et Augmentee" on title page.