A PLURALITY OF WORLDS ... TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY MR. GLANVILL

[Bernard le Bovier de FONTENELLE (1657-1757)]. A Plurality of Worlds. Written in French by the Author of the Dialogues of the Dead.  Translated into English By Mr. Glanvill. London: Printed for R. Bentley and S. Magnes, in Russel-Street, in Covent-Garden, 1688. Small octavo (5 7/8 x 3 ½ inches). Pp. [i-xii]; 1-152. Collation: A6, B-K8, L4 (nb C4 is mis-signed B4, and with E4 and F1 uncancelled). (General light toning to text, some old dampstaining, signs of an old tape repair to lower inner corner of title)). Rebound using mostly old materials: limp vellum, yapp fore-edge, early morocco title-label mounted on front pastedown.

First Glanvill edition, and one of the earliest major works of the Age of Enlightenment. First published, in French, in 1686, "Fontenelle's treatise... marks a true watershed in the history of the idea of the plurality of worlds.... written in a language that the normal educated person could understand, and... see the basic concepts of the new Copernican astronomy as supplemented by Descartes" (Steven J. Dick. ‘Plurality of Worlds’ [Cambridge, etc.: 1982], p. 126). As the author writes in his preface: “I have not compos’d an aery System which hath no foundation at all: I have made use of some of some true Philosophical Arguments, and of as many as I thought necessary; but it falls out very luckily in this Subject, that the Physical Ideas are in themselves very diverting; and as they convince and satisfie Reason so at the same time they present to the Imagination a Spectacle, which looks as if it were made on purpose to please it.”

Wing F1416; ESTC R26138