Louis Guillaume de La Follie, 1733?-1780. Le Philosophe sans prétention, ou L’homme rare. Ouvrage physique, chymique, politique et moral, dédié aux savans. Par M. D. L. F., Paris, Chez Clousier, 1775. Call number: (Ex) Q157.L25. Purchased by the Library in 1998-99. Princeton copy has contemporary signature “Mlle de Beaufort” at the head of the frontispiece.

“A picaresque Oriental romance and conte philosophique that created the first airship powered by electricity. (Benjamin Franklin’s experiments with lightning in the 1760s had impressed many observers, including, some years later, a young Percy Shelley.) The fact that fiction soon abandoned this opening to follow the balloon trail of the Montgolfier brothers should not reflect poorly on la Folie, argues Versins (see his Encyclopédie de l’utopie, des voyages extraordinaires et de la science fiction, 2e ed., Lausanne, 1984, page 505), but on the writers whose imaginations could rise no higher than the earth’s atmosphere. But the author’s importance is far greater than that. Here, for the first time, he adds, is the outline of a theory for a new type of literature inspired by science and technology: a theory that would not be truly implemented until nearly a century later with the works of another Frenchman, Jules Verne. In his dedicatory epistle, La Folie compares science to a beautiful woman whose inherent charms are not noticed until she is dressed up attractively enough to excite the curiosity of onlookers. (Through the ages it has not been unusual for writers to misdirect readers in such prefaces, to avow sound utilitarian purposes which they could use for cover from certain kinds of criticism. Whether la Folie’s work really does function as a procurer for Science is another matter. Yet the argument could be made that sugar-coated science constitutes the main course served up by Verne — and many subsequent authors of science fiction.) The ostensible narrator of la Folie’s tale is an Arab named Nadir (an astronomical pun) who, in a vision, beholds the voyages of a Mercurian named Ormisais. In his description of life on Mercury, Ormisais relates the workings of an elite scientific-literary organization (like the British Royal Society or the French Academy) but much more restrictive, with only a dozen members. One of the applicants for the latest vacancy is a young inventor, Scintilla, the true hero of the tale. He shows the Academy members his flying machine, ‘an elaborate combination of wheels, globes of glass, springs, wires, glass-covered wooden uprights, a plate rubbed with camphor and covered with gold leaf’ (Nicolson, Voyages to the Moon, p. 197): altogether a far cry from the winged contraptions of the past. After a short demonstration flight, Ormisais is chosen to take the trip to Earth, but he crash lands and is thus stranded, a stranger in a strange land. He tells Nadir that it took him 500 hours to ‘ascend’ or ‘descend’ to Earth: take your pick, for the universe, he says (enunciating a surprisingly modern cosmology) has neither height nor depth nor center nor frontiers. An important landmark in the evolution of interplanetary science fiction.” – Robert Eldridge (courtesy of L. W. Currey, Inc., Elizabethtown, N.Y.)

See also: “The First “Electrical” Flying Machine” by Nora M. Mohler and Marjorie H. Nicolson in Essays contributed in honor of President William Allan Neilson. (Northampton, MA: Smith College, 1939), pp. 143-158.

“Lafolie, (Louis Guillaume), a French chemist, born at Rouen in 1739. Discovered the yellow dye extracted from gaude, (dyer’s weed,) and wrote an imaginative work called the “Philosopher without Pretension,” (‘Philosophe sans Prétention,’ etc., 1775.) D. in 1780.” — Joseph Thomas, Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of Biography and Mythology (Philadelphia, London: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1915), vol. 2, page 1471.

More biographical information at http://www.gutenberg-e.org/lowengard/glossShell.html?f#f07.

For more on the Library’s Aeronautica, see this article concerning chiefly books, and this article concerning prints.

Princeton’s unique copy of the seventeenth century English engraving “A Mappe of the Man of Sin” is “Print of the Month” for August 2008 on the website British Printed Images to 1700, a digital library of prints and book illustrations from early modern Britain.

The 3,151 word article together with 22 footnotes explains this complicated engraving scene-by-scene and detail-by-detail.

The engraving is also described in Malcolm Jones, “Engraved Works Recorded in the Stationers’ Registers, 1562-1656,” Walpole Society, 64 (2002), p. 1-68 ff., number 176, p. 32 and fig 24.

Below is a detail from A Mappe of the Man of Sin: Wherein is Most Liuely Delineated the Rising Raigning and Ruine of the Kingdome of Antichrist [London, 1622]. Rare Book Division. Call number: (Ex) BT985 .W5e. Purchased from the London bookseller Bernard Quaritch in 1988.

‘Abby-lubber Preest’ • Click on the detail below to see entire original. Dimensions of original: 443 mm x 545 mm.

On November 15, 1857, the Philadelphia newspaper The Press carried this notice on page two:

The hopeful wish that the journal become “popular … profitable” clearly did not happen. No library is recorded as having a copy. Recently, a copy was found in the the Library’s Western Americana Collections. The Princeton copy was acquired on December 8, 1969 but was never entered into the Library’s main catalog. Its existence was noted only in two Princeton checklists of American Indian periodicals, one issued in 1970 and the other in 1979. (It still remains a mystery why a publication intended for a fraternal secret society of white men was included among periodicals published by or for native Americans.) Nonetheless, even though its existence was noted, it was not easily retrievable because it had no call number. During recent final days of a now completed five year campaign to box, inventory, and catalog American Indian periodicals, the Chief was found in a large, thin portfolio. During cataloging, its rarity and significance was discovered. The official record for the Chief now reads:

Title: Conestoga chief.
Published/Created: Philadelphia, Pa. : H.L. Goodall, 1857.
Description: v. ; 50 cm.
Began with vol. 1, no. 1 (Oct. 28, 1857)
Notes: “Devoted to the Improved Order of Red Men — popular literature, instruction and amusement.”
Intended for weekly publication. Cf. Prospectus (vol. 1, no. 1, p. 8).
No more published?
Subject(s): Improved Order of Red Men —Periodicals.
Related name(s): Improved Order of Red Men.
Location: Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA)
Call number: Oversize 2008-0020E

• • •

An extract from the July 1860 issue of The Ladies Repository, (p. 412-413) tells a tale of reader reaction to the Conestoga Chief. The story is titled “Indians’ Newspaper” and appeared in column headed “Recollections of a Deaf and Dumb Teacher, by Joe, the Jersey Mute.” (Actual name of the author was Joseph Mount.)

“In November, 1857, an Indian established a weekly newspaper at Philadelphia, called the “Conestoga Chief.” I bought a copy of the Chief for the double purpose of reading the thoughts of the red men, as expressed in the columns of that paper, and of showing it to my class, which was then, as now, composed wholly of boys. They were thrown in considerable excitement at sight of the word ”Chief” printed in such large characters, not exactly knowing that it was a “real, genuine, no-mistake” newspaper. They were in hot water, some declaring that they would be tomahawked, burnt alive, and all that sort of thing, and others that they would arm themselves with axes, knives, and the like, and stand with a strong front before the red face rather than submit to the Indian mode of burning alive, of which they had heard so much. As might be expected, all the school and the paper were together by the ears. I had considerable difficulty in restoring order in the schoolroom. I explained to the excited boys that the “Chief” was got up for the purpose of giving information, the same as the other papers of which the pale-faces had charge. They were convinced of their error, and had the magnanimity to own it up. They insisted upon knowing more of the Indians as they now exist, since I was thus placed in possession of a medium of communication with them. I marked three articles for recitation; namely, “An Eye for an Eye; or, an Indian Justice,” “The Indians,” and “Harper’s Mill,” which, in my opinion, were worth the price of the number. As I read those articles by signs, I never saw a more attentive audience in all my life, a fact which shows that even mute children of tender years regard the red face with lively interest, and ever wish to see more of it. One of my boys told me that the most beautiful girl he ever saw was a young squaw residing in the neighborhood of his home, and he said further that he wished to marry her. My boys particularly wished to see Indian girls, they said. Shame, shame on them for their partiality! But since they were then quite young, their ages varying from seven to twelve years, let their weakness in this respect be winked at.”

When first published in 1719, Daniel Defoe’s story of castaway Robinson Crusoe was a runaway success. Many translations and imitations of Robinson Crusoe followed. In fact, the progeny was so great that it became a genre unto itself called, in the plural, “Robinsonades.”

Princeton is the sole library listed in WorldCat, “the world’s largest network of library content,” to own a copy of a 1780 German Robinsonade featuring a heroine whose journey is a search as much for love and romance as it is for wealth. The work is entitled Merkwürdige Begebenheiten einiger deutschen Frauenzimmer, welche auf Reisen, sowohl zu Lande als zu Wasser durch Verheyratungen sehr reich und glücklich worden, und durch Ankauf ansehnlicher Güter sich in Niedersachsen niedergelassen aus eigener Erfahrung niedergeschrieben von Holston und Augusta. The actual names of the authors Holston and Augusta are unknown. At left is the frontispiece of the book. Click on it to see details of dress and scenery. For further information about the genre, see Jeannine Blackwell, “An Island of Her Own: Heroines of the German Robinsonades from 1720 to 1800” in The German Quarterly (1985), 58, 5-26.

Call number for the book: (Ex) 3459.68.363