This is the first English edition of a novel that is little known outside Dutch literary circles, but is an interesting example of popular fiction and radical thought about science and society in its day - not only in the Netherlands, but throughout Western Europe. It formed a bridge between the rationalist seventeenth century and the Age of Enlightenment, and was also a lively story in itself. It was rather less than imaginary, moreover, being linked to seventeenth to seventeenth-century Dutch activities in Australia and the first real knowledge about the legendary southern continent. Among...
This is the first English edition of a novel that is little known outside Dutch literary circles, but is an interesting example of popular fiction and...