[RÉTIF DE LA BRETONNE (Nicolas-Edme)]. LaDécouverte australe - Lot 15

[RÉTIF DE LA BRETONNE (Nicolas-Edme)]. LaDécouverte australe par un homme-volant, ou le Dédale français. Printed in Leipsick: and found in Paris [1781]. 2parts in 4volumes in-12, 240+196 [numbered 241à436] +188[numbered 437à 624]-92 +330[numbered 93à422]-(10)pp., black half-chagrin, spine ribbed and cloisonné with cold-stamped fillets; jaws a little rubbed, one plate trimmed short with very slight damage to the print, a few marginal ink stains, a small tear without loss restored to one plate (mid-nineteenth-century binding). First edition. Famous copper-engraved illustration comprising 23 plates out of text, including one fold-out, depicting flying men and fantastic beings, hybrids of humans and animals. A lavish work, LaDécouverte australe is presented as a novel of anticipation, in which the hero Victorin can fly thanks to an ingenious device (three years before the Montgolfier brothers' balloon ascent), or a vehicle can run without horses, etc. It is also a novel of the future. It is also a novel of imaginary journeys in the tradition of the works of Rabelais, Cyrano de Bergerac or Swift, enabling Rétif to make the reader aware of human failings ("how stupid the people of the world are"), to denounce the folly of war, and to formulate solutions for progress, such as an association of European nations in the interests of peace, or a society to protect animals. Rétif also intended LaDécouverte australe to be a "physical novel", as he would later call it in Mes Ouvrages, i.e. a fictional work illustrating a hypothesis on the evolution and differentiation of species. In some respects, it is also a communist utopia. The story is followed by several appendices: "Cosmogénies, ou Systèmes de la formation de l'univers, suivant les Anciens et les Modernes", "Lettre d'un singe, aux animaux de son espèce", "Dissertation sur les Hommes-brutes", and "LaSéance chés une amatrice". One of the few uncensored copies. Abbé Antoine Terrasson, the royal censor in charge of reviewing LaDécouverte australe in October 1780, found the last two volumes printed to be "too bold in their principles", and asked for them to be cut and amended. The "Lettre d'un singe", for example, was completely reworked, and 5 diatribes, or 86pp. were cut (James R. Childs, n°XXIII-1). Reproduction opposite