An unusual printing of the famous semi-utopian text, Fontenelle's influential account of other worlds. The text is of some feminist interest: it is a woman who asks questions of the scientist in the Conversations, and its tacit acceptance that a woman could easily match a man intellectually caused some early controversy.

An unusual printing of the famous semi-utopian text, Fontenelle's influential account of other worlds. The text is of some feminist interest: it is a woman who asks questions of the scientist in the Conversations, and its tacit acceptance that a woman could easily match a man intellectually caused some early controversy.
The translation here is by the accomplished Elizabeth Gunning, daughter of the novelist Susannah, outspoken and fiercely independent (she forged a letter to extricate herself from an unappetising marriage to the dour Lord Blandford).