VIAGGI DI ENRICO WANTON ALLE TERRE INCOGNITE AUSTRALI, ED AI PAESE DELLE SCIMIE, NE'QUALI SI SPIEGANO IL CARATTERE LI COSTUMI LE SCIENZE, E LA POLIZIA DI QUEGLI STRAORDINARJ ABITANTI. Tradotti da un Manoscritto Inglese, con Figure in Rame. In Venezia: Presso Giovanni Tagier, MDCCXLIX [1749]. Small octavo, two volumes: pp. [1-14] [1] 2-231 [232]; [1-2] [1] 2-307 [308], title leaf in volume I is a cancel, A3 in volume I is not called for and text is complete, 24 inserted plates, most double page and folded, with copperplate illustrations by Giorgio Fossati, eighteenth-century vellum, brown leather spine labels, edges speckled red. First edition, first printing. A popular eighteenth-century satire, thoroughly in the tradition of Gulliver and Niels Klim, reprinted several times in Italian and Spanish into the early nineteenth-century. Seriman's work may claim "a place both in an Australian library and in a collection of aeronautica, and in addition, it forms an important item in any collection of imaginary voyages, such as GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by which probably it was inspired." - TLS, 15 February 1923, p. 112. Seriman's "work is presented in the form of an imaginary voyage and contains many of the conventions of the genre. Two young men are shipwrecked on what is obviously the coast of Australia. They first spend some time in the land of the monkey people. Their study of that society provides a method through which Seriman is able to satirize eighteenth-century Venetian society. In the second part of the book the hero visits the land of the dog-headed people. There, an absolute monarch, despite his pessimistic view of human nature, has organized a group of philosopher statesmen as advisers through whom he attempts to create an orderly society. A part of the training of such philosopher-statesmen (and the hero of the book becomes one such trainee) is a journey through that part of the realm which has been set aside for the philosophers and scientists. The journey through this area gives Seriman an opportunity to satirize a number of eighteenth-century scientific, philosophical, and social ideas in much the same way as Swift. The state over which the king rules is perhaps not a complete utopia, but it has many aspects of the kind of utopia that might have been developed through proper application of the best principles of the European enlightenment. Despite the claims on the title page, except for a few excerpts, the work has not been translated into English. D. Maxwell White's Zaccaria Seriman, 1709-1784, and the Viaggi di Enrico Wanton (Manchester University Press, 1961) includes a good summary of plot and ideas." - Lewis, Utopian Literature, p. 175-176. "The bibliography of VIAGGI DI ENRICO WANTON is complex. Publication of the various issues often overlapped, and individual volumes of those coherent sets that do survive can often carry dates spanning a period of up to seven years, thereby making it difficult to decide exactly which volume belongs to which issue. The book was first printed at Venice in two volumes in 1749 (despite at least one issue bearing the date 1748 on one of its volumes) and was reprinted in 1756 and 1759. A much expanded and more common Italian edition, imprinted Berne, was published in 1764 ..." (Howgego). Fortunati and Trousson, eds., Dictionary of Literary Utopias, pp. 658-659. Gove, The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction, pp. 314-16. Gibson and Patrick, "Utopias and Dystopias, 1500-1750" in Gibson, St. Thomas More: A Preliminary Bibliography (1961) 769. Howgego, Encyclopedia of Exploration: Invented and Apocryphal Narratives of Travel S 22. Negley, Utopian Literature: A Bibliography 1021. Sabin 79229-79232 (citing later editions). Some tanning and spotting to the text paper, mostly in volume I, some staining to the fore-edge margins of several plates and the last third of volume I, old patch-in to lower fore-edge margin of volume II not affecting text, paper fault to F3 of volume II with loss of four letters, narrow chip to lower margin of K3 with loss of several letters, overall, a very good copy. (#179076).
Price: $10,000.00
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