LUCIAN; Francis HICKES ( translator ). Lucian’s True History.
LUCIAN; Francis HICKES ( translator ). Lucian’s True History. [[bmid:2125989a]]
LUCIAN; Francis HICKES ( translator ). Lucian’s True History. [[bmid:2125989b]]
LUCIAN; Francis HICKES ( translator ). Lucian’s True History. [[bmid:2125989c]]

LUCIAN; Francis HICKES (translator). Lucian’s True History.

£650.00
£650.00
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Illustrated in Beardsley’s New Manner

LUCIAN; Francis HICKES (translator). Lucian’s True History. London: Privately printed [but Lawrence & Bullen]. 1894.

4to. Publisher’s pale green cloth (faded to light brown as with most copies), remnants of brown silk place-markers loosely inserted, fore- and tail-edge uncut; pp. xxix, [1 (blank)], 247, [1 (blank)]; 16 plates with tissue guards, of which two by Beardsley, title-page printed in red and black; text in facing Greek and English; slight creasing to cloth, corners and spine ends slightly worn; variable offsetting from tissue guards, a few light marks to title, plate facing p. 43 detached; nonetheless a very good copy; 1921 ink stamp of W.H. Creber to front pastedown.

First edition thus of this sixteenth-century translation of Lucian’s satirical work of proto-science fiction, no. 155 of 251 copies privately printed for Lawrence and Bullen, with two illustrations by Beardsley, an early commission.

Lucian’s Alēthē diēgēmata, or Vera Historia, written in the second century AD, is the earliest work of fiction to involve travel to outer space, interplanetary conflict, and interactions with extraterrestrials. The other illustrations to this edition are by William Strang and J.B. Clark.

The firm of Lawrence & Bullen was established in 1891 by A.H. Bullen, founder of the Shakespeare Head Press, and the publisher H.W. Bullen. Beardsley wrote to G.F. Scotson-Clark around 15 February 1893 that even ‘better than the Morte Darthur is the book that Lawrence and Bullen have given me, the Vera Historia of Lucian. I am illustrating this entirely in my new manner, or, rather, a development of it. The drawings are certainly the most extraordinary things that have ever appeared in a book both in respect to technique and conception. They are also the most indecent’ (Letters, p. 44).

Beardsley’s drawings are ‘A Snare of Vintage’, facing p. 23, and ‘Dreams’, facing p. 209.

Gertner Zatlin 270–71; Samuels Lasner 78; Vallance 74.

SKU: 2125989