THE ALTRURIAN ROMANCES. Introduction and Notes to the Text by Clara and Rudolf Kirk. Text Established by Scott Bennett. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1968. Octavo, cloth. First combined edition and first printing of this text. Collects A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA (1894), "Letters of an Altrurian Traveller, I-V" (1893-1894, revised texts collected in IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES [1896]), and THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE (1907). A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA is "one of the few American utopian works similar to William Morris's NEWS FROM NOWHERE. A visitor from an ideal country, shocked by the social and economic inequality in America, describes his unhurried land where the ballot box toppled the Age of Accumulation and replaced it with a form of Christian Socialism." - Roemer, The Obsolete Necessity, p. 197. Part I of THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE, is a revised version of letters VI-XI of "Letters of an Altrurian Traveller," originally published in THE COSMOPOLITAN, November 1893 - September 1894, in which the traveler leaves the New Hampshire countryside to visit New York City and Chicago. In the second part, the Altrurian's American bride writes about her experiences in Altruria. Anatomy of Wonder (1976) 2-96 and 2-97 and (1981) 1-102. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 1134. Clareson, Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s 433 and 434. Lewis, Utopian Literature, pp. 94-96. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 118. Negley, Utopian Literature: A Bibliography 593 and 594. Roemer, The Obsolete Necessity, p, 195. Rooney, Dreams and Visions: A Study of American Utopias, 1865-1917, p. 191. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, p. 102 and pp. 139-40. Suvin, Victorian Science Fiction in the UK, p. 58. Bleiler (1978), p. 104. Bleiler (1948), p. 154. A fine copy in fine dust jacket. (#161406).
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