DIE INSEL MELLONTA. Leipzig: Verlag von Oswald Mutze, 1887. Octavo, pp. [i-v] vi [1] 2-248, original three-quarter green cloth and marbled boards, spine panel stamped in gold and blind, all edges marbled, yellow endpapers. Second, enlarged edition. A variant issue with tipped in title leaf with imprint of Verlag von Oswald Mutze, rather than Wilhelm Braumüller. A young man is shipwrecked on Mellonta, an island utopia in the South Pacific where a free love communist society flourishes. A volcanic eruption sinks the island. The young man escapes, only to discover that his adventure was a hypnotically induced dream. The plot has become canonical since Plato. Discussed by Kretzmann in his dissertation on German utopian books, and cited by him (p. 49) as one of "the three more serious of these utopias ...," the others being Lasswitz' "Apoikis" (1882) and Amersin's DAS LAND DER FREIHEIT ... (1874). The present edition adds a new chapter (16) of 9 pages. Kretzmann, The Pre-War German Utopian Novel (1890-1914), Ph.D. diss., Brown University, May, 1936, p. 212. Lexikon 1, p. 116. Negley, Utopian Literature 548 (not recording this edition). Bloch (2002) 1445 (citing the 1885 Wien edition). Binding edges rubbed, lacks front free endpaper, a very good copy. (#152266).
Price: $850.00
"Zweite, vermehrte Auflage" on title page.