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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.l Gove, pp. 303-305; Stammhammer II, p. 171; cf. McNelis (ed.), The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground (Nebraska, 1960). With engraved frontispiece, engraved title-page, folding map and 6 full-page plates, engraved by Br�hl. Pages: [12], 366 pp.

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."