L'an Deux Mille quartre cent quarante, reve s'il en fut jamais, volume 1 only

Mercier, Louis Sebastien

Edité par Unknown, Paris, 1786

A propos de cet article

Volume One (1786) only of three volumes, 1/4 leather spine, 2nd edn enlarged from the original 1770 work. French text, 380pps, scuffing to board covers else VG. Rare in any condition and as such. Uncertain if published in Paris or London. L'an deux mille quatre cent quarante is told within a Sleeper Awakes frame: the protagonist goes to sleep in eighteen century Paris, awakening five centuries later in a France which has become a rationally governed Utopia along Enlightenment lines, as stirred by the neo-primitivism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Paris itself is airy and clement; there is no formal Religion and no army. The protagonist's constant comparisons of the new and the old Paris are of course satirical but they also demonstrate the growing power of the concept of Time itself as a speculative tool.Mercier's novel is a central eighteenth-century text, important particularly for any analysis of pre-Revolutionary ferment in France; in sf terms it illuminates the relationship between Enlightenment thought and the literatures of the fantastic, and can be see to come close to the imagining of a rendered future.It was probably the first utopia to be published in the USA, in 1795, a reprint of the 1772 translation; unfortunately, this expanded 1786 version of the text has never been fully translated into English.

N° de réf. du vendeur 115016

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: L'an Deux Mille quartre cent quarante, reve s'il en fut jamais, volume 1 only
• Éditeur: Unknown, Paris
• Date de parution: 1786
• Langue: anglais
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: 2nd Edition
• État de l'article: Very Good
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • SCI-FI*