VIAGE DE UN FILÓSOFO Á SELENÓPOLIS, CORTE DESCONOCIDA DE LOS HABITANTES DE LA TIERRA, Escrito por él Mismo, y Publicado por D. A. M. y E. Madrid: Por Gomez Fuentenebro y Compañia, 1804. Small octavo, pp. [1-4] 5-182 [183-184: blank], early nineteenth-century full leather, marbled endpapers. First edition. This proto SF story of a voyage to the Moon was adapted by Marqués y Espejo from LE VOYAGEUR PHILOSOPHE DANS UN PAYS INCONNU AUX HABITANS DE LA TERRE, a utopian novel published in two volumes in Amsterdam in 1761 under the pseudonym "Mr. de Listonai" (possibly Daniel de Villeneuve, but more likely Charles François Tiphaigne de la Roche). According to Maurizio Fabbri, Marqués y Espejo's work "is very interesting both in literary and ideological terms, even if it has a haphazard internal structure, with irrelevant digressions, such as the three letters from famous women of antiquity in chapter VIII. The author is able to mix, with terse and efficient language, elements of extravagant and entertaining imagination with careful observation of the reality of his time, alternating the most random and bizarre considerations with others in which the utopia becomes concrete and changes into a political and social critique and moral reflection on the customs of contemporary man. The novel contains characteristic elements of utopian narration and the imaginary journey, and is rich in the recurrent suppositions, expectations and themes of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment such as the raising of children and education of the young, revealing numerous similarities with Rousseau's ÉMILE." - Fortunati and Trousson (eds), Dictionary of Literary Utopias, pp. 659-60. "Although long thought to be a significant Spanish original, and still regarded as such by scholars ignorant of its French predecessor, this very scarce work is without doubt a plagiarized translation of LE VOYAGEUR PHILOSOPHE." - Howgego, Encyclopedia of Exploration: Invented and Apocryphal Narratives of Travel V13. Negley, Utopian Literature 749. Leather worn with slight loss at spine ends and three corner tips and a bit of cracking along outer joints, scattered foxing to text and tanning to several gatherings, two small stains on leaf B4, tiny hole in fore-edge margin of leaf C6, a sound, good copy overall. OCLC locates 5 copies worldwide. Rare. (#155944).
Price: $2,750.00
No statement of printing.