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Daniel Defoe's Imaginary Voyages to the Moon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Rodney M. Baine
Rodney M. Baine*
Affiliation:
University of Georgia, Athens
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Extract

Ever since 1869, when William Lee inserted them in his bibliography of Defoe, in Daniel Defoe: His Life and Recently Discovered Writings (i, xxxii), two imaginary voyages to the moon and a letter from the Man in the Moon have been incorporated in the canon of Defoe's writings as separate and distinct from his main lunar voyage, The Consolidator, or Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon (1705). These three are A Journey to the World in the Moon; A Second, and more Strange Voyage to the World in the Moon, both noted in the head title as “By the Author of the true Born English-man”; and A Letter from the Man in the Moon to the Author of the True Born English-man. All three were dated 1705, and all were printed first in London; then at least the first was reprinted at Edinburgh by James Watson in Craig's-closs. Each is a single sheet, a quarto of four pages, in double columns. In including these three publications as independent items in the Defoe canon, Lee has been followed by all the British and American bibliographers of Defoe: by Thomas Wright, William P. Trent, Henry C. Hutchins, and John Robert Moore.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 5 , October 1966 , pp. 377 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 Pars. 2–10 of the Journey are taken from The Consolidator, pp. 75–83, running together two paragraphs on pp. 78–79 and omitting a brief paragraph on p. 80. Pars. 11 and 12 come from pp. 29–30, with some slight rephrasing of p. 30, and the final list embodied in par. 13 comes precisely from pp. 352–353.

Trent's manuscript comment is quoted by courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library.

2 Pars. 2–4 come from The Consolidator, pp. 21–23; pars. 5–15, from pp. 99–107, omitting a paragraph from p. 100, 2 from p. 101, and several from pp. 105–106. Pars. 18 and 19 divide a single paragraph on p. 351; pars. 20 and 21 reproduce p. 358, omitting two lines and a complete paragraph there; and pars. 22 and 23 come from p. 70.

3 Of the original letter in The Consolidator, 5 pars. are omitted after par. 3 of the Letter from the Man in the Moon; one each after pars. 5, 7, 8, 9; 3 pars. after par. 10; 1 after pars. 14, 16, and 17; 4 after 19; 3 after 20; 1 after 23; 3 after 26; 2 after 28; and 1 after par. 30.

4 Marjorie Hope Nicolson and Nora M. Mohler, “Swift's ‘Flying Island’ in the Voyage to Laputa,” Annals of Science, ii (1937), 426–427; Nicolson, Voyages to the Moon (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 275. Miss Nicolson recorded the presence of the New Voyage in the first volume of The Diverting Jumble: or They Shall be Saved, Being a Collection of Pamphlets on Various Subjects (London, 1747).