Books

First edition. With four engraved plates (one folding), engraved title page, all bound at front. Head and tail pieces. 380 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Biting satire of contemporary Denmark in the mode of Swift s Gulliver s Travels, the Iter Subterraneum or Underground of Nicolas or Niels Klim is a remarkable hollow-earth utopia composed by Ludvig Holberg. In 1665, Klim falls down a hole and finds himself in the land of Potu, where the "inhabitants show a societal pattern diametrically opposed to that of the contemporary stereotype: women are the dominant sex and males perform only menial tasks. Klim is then exiled to an Underground land attached to the bottom of Earth's crust and inhabited by sentient monkeys" (SFE); he has numerous picaresque adventures before returning above ground in Norway This is the original edition in Latin; it was soon translated into English as A Journey to the World Under-Ground. By Nicolas Klimius (1742), and widely translated throughout Europe. Bleiler notes that Holberg s tale lacks Swift s misanthropy. The four plates include a folding map of the hollow earth, a portrait of Klim as Emperor; a tree-man; and a cloaked humanoid ape with a long tail. The title page is engraved. Gove pp. 303-5; Negley, Utopian Literature 575; Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 1114; Trillion Year Spree, pp. 78-9; Anatomy of Wonder (1995) 1-50; Lewis, Utopian Literature, p. 92; Howgego H26 Original rose boards, unpressed and pages untrimmed. Extremities rubbed and scuffed, some dampstaining to bottom corner. With bookplates of historian Johann Joseph Ignaz von D�llinger (1799-1890) and Henrik G. Petersen (ca. 1899). Very good copy With four engraved plates (one folding), engraved title page, all bound at front. Head and tail pieces. 380 pp. 1 vols. 8vo.

Set in the year 1665, the story is narrated by Niels Klim, who returns to his hometown of Bergen after graduating from the University of Copenhagen. During a mountain climb with friends, he falls into a pit and, after fifteen minutes, emerges in the hollow interior of the Earth. This space is a miniature cosmos with planets orbiting a small sun. After drifting for a while, he lands on a planet called Nazar, in the kingdom of Potu (an anagram of "utopia"), where he encounters intelligent tree-like beings. Holberg's work combines satire with a fantastic voyage and embodies the spirit of the eighteenth century. Aside from its Latin language and passages of verse and prose adapted from classical authors, this novel is entirely modern in spirit. Its depiction of travel to exotic lands is reminiscent of Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" (1726), but with more wit and humor. Holberg's idea of a hollow Earth containing other habitable lands foreshadows Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth."