REISE NACH IKARIEN.
Cabet, Etienne:
Paris. 1847 [i.e. 1848]. [4],iv,xxvi,541,[1]pp. 12mo. Half title. Original printed blue wrappers. Wrappers chipped along edges and at spine. An occasional fox mark, but rather clean internally. A good copy. Untrimmed, and in original condition. The scarce German-language edition of one of the most influential of all works of 19th-century Utopian thought. First published in 1842, this novel had attracted nearly four hundred thousand adherents by 1848 to the principles it expounded: fraternity, equal rights for women, and prohibition of slavery and domestic servitude. In 1848, a detachment of Icarians settled in Texas about twenty miles north of Fort Worth, where they set about attempting to bring principle into conciliation with practice. They met a fate similar to that of most communal societies in Texas - fever, bad crops, etc. - and the members decamped for more hospitable places: Illinois, New Orleans, Dallas, or France. Though dated 1847 on the titlepage, this German-language edition was likely actually issued in 1848, and the front wrapper carries a date of 1848. This German-language edition was almost certainly issued to capitalize on the ferment in Germany caused by the Revolutions of 1848, in hopes of drawing new adherents to Cabet's communistic cause. OCLC locates only eight copies of this German-language edition. Not in Sabin or Negley. OCLC 54250267, 81100134, 12858060.
(Item ID: WRCAM39543) $1,250.00