Fontenelle

1715 · 160304 — London: Printed for A. Bettesworth 1715. 12mo pp. 1-12 1-192; collates A 6 B-I 12 frontispiece eighteenth-century brown leather front and rear panels ruled and tooled in blind four raised bands on spine panel no title label. The first printing of the Gardiner edition. Fontenelle's ENTRETIENS SUR LA PLURALITE DES MONDES his most famous and frequently reprinted and translated book was first published in 1686. It is "the first example in French of a learned work placed within the reach of an educated but non specialized public." - DSB V 59. A popular account of the systems of Ptolemy Copernicus and Tycho Brahe in dialogue form the treatise "awakened general interest in astronomy and popularized the scientific system of inquiry; it also emphasized the small space occupied by man and this planet relatively to the rest of the universe. The work was ridiculed by Voltaire though it suggested his MICROMEGAS." - The Oxford Companion to French Literature 1959 p. 278. The first of the three seventeenth-century English translations was A DISCOURSE OF THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS . Translated into English by Sir W. D. Knight. Dublin: Printed by Andr. Crook and Sam. Helsham for William Norman 1687. The first edition of the Glanvill translation containing five dialogues was published in 1688 the same year Aphra Behn's translation of Fontenelle's book A DISCOVERY OF NEW WORLDS was published in London by William Canning. This Gardiner translation first published in 1715 is the first edition to include a translation of Fontenelle's sixth dialogue. "In all the literature of the cosmic voyage there was no book more popular than Fontenelle's CONVERSATIONS OF THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. Translated again and again it seemed to the British peculiarly their own book read for at least a century both by men and by those 'ladies' of whom we have many a description one of whom would read it aloud to others who were busily engaged in making strawberry jam. This was a book indeed that warranted a subtitle I once discovered in an eighteenth-century popularization of astronomy: 'Science made clear to the Meanest Capacities even those of Women and Children.'" - Nicolson Voyages to the Moon pp. 58-9. Fontenelle's book "became a seminal influence on proto science fiction . This is one of the earliest works ever written popularizing science notably astronomy for the layman which it does by wittily presenting its speculations -- many about the possibility of life on other worlds -- in the form of conversations after dinner between the author and a marquise." - Clute and Nicholls eds The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction 1993 p. 437. "A great stimulant to utopian speculations and science fiction." - Gibson and Patrick "Utopias and Dystopias 1500-1750" in Gibson St. Thomas More: A Preliminary Bibliography 1961 683. See Ley Rockets Missiles and Space Travel 1951 pp. 22-4 and Ley Rockets Missiles and Men in Space 1968 pp. 21-2 for a good summary of the book. Bleiler Science-Fiction: The Early Years p. 853. Howgego Encyclopedia of Exploration: Invented and Apocryphal Narratives of Travel F16. Negley Utopian Literature: A Bibliography 371. Versins Encyclopédie de l'Utopie des Voyages Extraordinaires et de la Science Fiction pp. 341-42. NCBEL II 1513. An early important and scarce edition of this classic work. A lovely copy. Enclosed in a custom quarter leather rounded back clamshell box. #160304 Printed for A. Bettesworth unknown books