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

Extraordinary – & Indecent

LUCIAN; Francis HICKES (translator). Lucian's True History. London: A.H. Bullen. 1902.

4to. Publisher’s vellum-backed boards with blue paper sides, printed spine label ruled in red; pp. [2], xxix, [1 (blank)], 117, [3]; 16 plates, of which 2 by Beardsley; some soiling and spotting to spine, corners worn; browning and spotting to endpapers, occasional light marginal spotting to fore-edge, else internally very good; a good, uncut copy.

Second edition thus, no. 57 of 500 copies, of this sixteenth-century translation of Lucian’s satirical work of proto-science fiction, 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. This edition is entirely in English; the first edition to feature these illustrations had appeared in 1894 with facing Greek and English text, privately printed by Lawrence & Bullen. The firm had been established in 1891 by A.H. Bullen and H.W. Lawrence. This edition was published two years after the publishers split; A.H. Bullen then operated independently from Cecil Court (as here) before co-founding the Shakespeare’s Head Press with Frank Sidgwick in 1904.

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. 13, and ‘Dreams’, facing p. 99.

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

SKU: 2125993