EREWHON OR OVER THE RANGE ... New and Revised Edition. London: Grant Richards, 1901. Octavo, pp. [1-2] [i-iv] v [vi] vii-xviii 1-323 [324] [325: publisher ads] [326-328: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], original red cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold, t.e.g. Second edition, revised and enlarged. Butler's first novel, first published at his own expense in 1872. A classic utopian satire that "probed to the heart of modern society, and he may well have written what one critic has called 'the first modern utopian romance.' Certainly, it is one of the most successful of the anti-technological utopias." - Lewis, Utopian Literature, pp. 33-5. EREWHON (1872) and its sequel EREWHON REVISITED (1901) "are set in a New Zealand utopia where machines have been banned for many years, because (in harsh parody of Darwin's theory of evolution, which Butler disliked) of human fears that machines, in their rapid evolutionary progress, would soon supplant Man. The visitor to this utopia -- which mixes dystopian elements freely with its more attractive aspects -- is named Higgs, and his eventual escape from Erewhon in a balloon triggers a new religion in that country, Sunchildism. The sequel is devoted mainly to this faith and Higgs's effect upon it on his return, in an allegorical satire on Christianity's origins and growth of the legend of the Second Coming." - Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), p. 181. This revised edition of EREWHON adds a five-page preface by the author discussing the origins of his novel, and adds two chapters on the rights of animals and vegetables in a satirical attack on T. H. Huxley. Aldiss and Wingrove, Trillion Year Spree, pp. 92-4. Anatomy of Wonder (1976) 2-33; (1981) 1-34; (1987) 1-19; (1995) 1-19; and (2004) II-201. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 344. Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), p. 181. Negley, Utopian Literature: A Bibliography 171. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, p. 60. Suvin, Victorian Science Fiction in the UK, p. 16. Survey of Science Fiction Literature II, pp. 729-34. Bleiler (1978), p. 36. Reginald 02374. Hoppé 41. Gerber, Utopian Fantasy (1973), p. 143. Cloth mottled and slightly bubbled but unworn, soundly bound, and internally clean apart from some offsetting on the free endpapers. A bright, very good copy of an uncommon, important edition of this landmark book. (#139863).
Price: $450.00
"NEW AND REVISED EDITION" on title page.