THE SMOKY GOD OR A VOYAGE TO THE INNER WORLD. Chicago: Forbes & Company, 1908. Octavo, pp. [1-2] [5-10] 11-186 [187-190: ads] [note: text complete despite gap in pagination; frontispiece and other inserted plates are included in publisher's pagination], eleven inserted plates with color illustrations by John A. Williams, publisher's pictorial light blue cloth, front, spine and rear panels stamped in dark blue, red and white. First edition. A presentation copy with signed inscription by Emerson dated 3 April 1908 on the front free endpaper. A late, but representative, hollow earth novel, based on the Symmes theory of concentric spheres and polar voids. Fishermen driven north by a storm enter an unknown interior world via the hole at the North Pole. Here they find the cradle of humanity inhabited by an advanced race of giants who have achieved a high level of civilization through the use of electrical energy from the earth's dull red, sun-like core, which they worship as the Smoky God. "Fictional reconciliation of hollow-earth theories with eclectic Fundamentalism." - Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 664. Anatomy of Wonder (1976) 2-71 and (1981) 1-66. Bailey, Pilgrims Through Space and Time, p. 110. Clareson, The Emergence of American Science Fiction: 1880-1915, pp. 152-55. Clareson, Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s 281. Lewis, Utopian Literature, p. 57. Negley, Utopian Literature: A Bibliography 317. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, p. 141. In 333. Bleiler (1978), p. 68. Reginald 04889. Smith, American Fiction, 1901-1925 E-177. Spine panel just a bit tanned, a clean, tight, very good copy. Remarkably, most of the perishable white enamel stamping is present. (#172404).
Price: $500.00
No statement of printing.