[HOLBERG, Ludvig von].
Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum novam telluris theoriam ac historiam quintae monarchiae adhuc nobis incognitae, exhibens e bibliotheca B. Abelini.
Copenhagen and Leipzig, Friedrich Christian Pelt, 1754. 8vo. With engraved frontispiece, engraved title-page, folding map and 6 full-page plates, engraved by Brühl. 19th-century boards, covered with marbled paper. [12], 366 pp.
€ 1,250
Third, corrected and enlarged edition of this influential utopian novel. Holberg uses the voyage as an instrument of philosophical and moral satire, "to correct popular error and to distinguish the semblance between vice and virtue from the reality", as he later explained in his Memoirs. The work, first published in 1741, went through some 60 editions, it was translated into many languages and ranks among the most popular (utopian) novels of the 18th century. Among novels about fantasy worlds, only Swift's Gulliver's Travels was more popular.
Good copy. Gove, pp. 303-305; Stammhammer II, p. 171; cf. McNelis (ed.), The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground (Nebraska, 1960).
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