[Rarebooks] fa: PHRENOLOGY - TRAVELS IN PHRENOLOGASTO 1829 - SATIRE/FANTASTIC VOYAGE

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auctions ending Sunday, February 17. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/al7rkjj

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Gio. Battista Balscopo [John Trotter:] Travels in Phrenologasto. Translated from the Italian. London: Saunders and Otley, 1829. Tall 8vo (22 cm) in original publisher's boards, rebacked, with the original printed spine label laid down; page edges untrimmed; viii, [9]-217, [1] pp.

An uncommon and rather odd book, not only a satire of the phrenology craze then at its height, but also, according to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011), a relatively early example of both the "imaginary journey" and "lost race" sub-genres of fantastic fiction. It purports to be the account of an Italian balloonist who is carried off to Phrenologasto, an island/planet in close orbit above the Earth. There he finds a government and society run on strict phrenological/craniological principles, where a person's destiny is determined by the size and shape of the various "organs" of his cranium relating to vanity, industriousness, philoprogenitiveness, etc. The work is not in fact "translated from the Italian" and the author's name is a pseudonym; authorship is generally attributed to John Trotter, a civil servant of the East India Company in Bengal, "who (in the year 1825) sunk, at a very early age, under the influence of the climate of that country," according to the "editor's" preface.

Binding shows a bump/indent to the top of the front board and the bottom of the rear board, short crack to the bottom of the rear hinge, a few scattered stains; contents very clean, bright and fresh, untrimmed and firmly bound.