NEUROOMIA: A NEW CONTINENT. A MANUSCRIPT DELIVERED BY THE DEEP. London, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane: George Robertson & Company, 1894. Octavo, pp. [i-vi] vii [viii] 1-307 [308: blank], original blue-gray cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black, white endpapers with design incorporating publisher's monogram printed in brown. First Australian edition. The priority of this Australian edition, published in cloth, pictorial boards (yellowback format) and printed paper wrappers, and the British edition published by Swan Sonnenschein, also in 1894, has not been established. "Utopian lost race novel of a scientifically advanced civilization in Antarctica. Included in the book is some account of the catastrophe caused by the approach of an inhabited planet (peopled by giants) and a description of an inhabited Mars as seen through an advanced type of telescope. In this section it is mentioned that a planet from beyond the confines of the solar system comes near Mars every 100,000 years or so; that world is inhabited and the excess population of Mars travels there when it comes close." - Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 148. Blackford, et al., Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction, pp. 20-22; 226. Larnach, Materials Towards a Checklist of Australian Fantasy to 1937 (1950), p. 15 (giving the author's name in error as "McGiver"). Australian and New Zealand "Lost Race" Fiction in the Collection of Stuart Teitler (private list), p. 2. Miller, p. 661. Lewis, Utopian Literature, p. 120. Locke, Voyages in Space 139. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, p. 103. Suvin, Victorian Science Fiction in the UK, p. 58. Bleiler (1978), p. 130. Reginald 09927. Not in Negley. Lending library label of the Arcadia Hygienic Library of St. Kilda, Scotland, affixed to front paste-down. Some general dust soiling to cloth, cloth rubbed at spine ends, corner tips, and along outer joints, still a tight, very good copy. A very scarce book rarely seen in this cloth binding. (#150127).
Price: $850.00
No statement of printing.