Utopias and Dystopias: Five Rare Books for Collectors

Highlights from Bernard Quaritch's new catalogue Nowhere, a selection of books on utopias, dystopias, and imaginary voyages include:

And a New Earth. A Romance by Charles Ernest Jacomb (London, George Routledge & Sons, 1926)

First edition of this post-apocalyptic fantasy novel relating the history of a utopian island that survived a ‘second flood’ in 1958, which destroyed the world’s civilization and reduced the human population to just 10,000. The island was re-discovered by the New World Fleet in 2832, 872 years after the near-extinction of the human race, and was found to have survived the catastrophe relatively untouched. The novel follows the story of George Smith and his foundation and leadership of the utopia later dubbed ‘Easter Island’.

La Republica nuovamente ritrovata, del governo dell’isola Eutopia by Thomas More, translator Ortensio Lando (Venice, Aurelio Pincio, 1548)

Scarce first edition in Italian of Thomas More’s Utopia, the first complete translation into any vernacular language, including English. First published in Latin in Louvain in 1516, More’s Utopia was only partly translated into German in 1524  

A Visit to Blestland by W.H. Galier (Melbourne, George Robertson & Co., 1896)

First edition of this Australian novel of utopian socialism, dedicated to the workers of the world, which lambasts capitalism and views organised religion as an obstacle to social progress, curiously given as a prize book to a pupil at a Melbourne Presbyterian school in 1920. Blestland is a republican workers’ paradise located on a different planet which reveals how the divisions of earth can be abolished by limiting "the enormous power for evil which capital can wield".

Le Monde joué, ou memoires pour servir a l’histoire du genre humain by Pierre-Joseph Boudier de Villemert (Paris, Bernard Brunet, 1753)
 
First editions of a scarce work by the philosopher, moralist, and Parisian avocat Boudier de Villemert (1716–1801). Le Monde joué is a satire on human society and fashions. In the first part an extra-terrestrial called Zouzou visits Earth in ancient times and witnesses the development of trade, the arts, and literature, becoming bored, however, when mankind begins philosophising. In the second part he revisits our planet in the 18th century accompanied by his friend Zinzin, the pair of aliens amusing themselves in subjugating men to women and making men adopt female dress and fashion

A Day of Public Murders by Yuli Markovich Daniel (Washington, D.C., B[oris] Filippoff, 1962)

First edition, smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published pseudonymously Nikolai Arzhak, of this dystopian work in which the government announces a Day of Public Murders and allows random killings, one of the books which led directly to Daniel’s arrest and show trial in 1966 for anti-Soviet activity.