HISTOIRE COMIQUE DES ETATS ET EMPIRES DE LA LUNE ET DU SOLEIL ... Nouvelle Edition Revue et Publiee avec des Notes et une Notice Historique par P. L. Jacob Bibliophile. Paris: Adolphe Delahays, Libraire-editeur, 1858. Octavo, pp. [i-v] vi-xi [xii-xiii] xiv-lxxx [1-3] 4-314 [315][316: blank], contemporary quarter green pebbled morocco and marbled boards, spine panel stamped in gold and blind, marbled endpapers. First printing of this edition. Cyrano's HISTOIRE COMIQUE is one of the earliest classics of science fiction and was historically important in the development of the lunar voyage. "... the most brilliant of all seventeenth-century parodies of the cosmic voyage." - Nicolson, Voyages to the Moon, p. 159. "Cyrano's ingenious mixture of science and romance has furnished a model for many subsequent writers, among them Swift and E. A. Poe." - Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edition) 7: 702. "... the first writer to describe an interplanetary journey by means of rockets ... He is a very sharp satirist and his tale abounds with amusing attacks on religion, contemporary scientific theory, philosophy, customs and mores ... Throughout the development many small points are based on Cyrano's interpretation or extrapolation of the day. The book is thus science-fiction of its period. A remarkable book that deserves wider readership than it has received." - Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 542. Aldiss and Wingrove, Trillion Year Spree, pp. 73-5. Anatomy of Wonder (1976) 1-12; (1981) 1-52; (1987) 1-12; (1995) 1-12; and (2004) II-295. Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, p. 291. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy Volume II, p. 37. Versins, Encyclopédie de l'Utopie, des Voyages Extraordinaires, et de la Science Fiction, pp. 217-19. Bleiler (1978), p, 55. Interlibrum 63. Touch of rubbing to binding extremities, still a very attractive, internally fine copy. (#23054).
Price: $150.00
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