Albany: The Argus Company, Printers, 1878.
Price: $25,000.00
Hardcover. First edition. Octavo. Original beveled edge decorated green cloth. A trifle rubbed, near fine in a good example of the exceptionally rare dustwrapper. The jacket has moderate overall chipping, and has been professionally reinforced internally at the folds but has no other restoration (i.e. paper added). Housed in a custom full morocco clamshell case. Accompanied by a signed note on the stationary of bibliographer and science fiction dealer L.W. Currey loosely inserted: "Regarding Kip's Hannibal's Man (1878), I know of no earlier dust jacket for a science fiction book. L.W. Currey." Mr. Currey also confirmed that he knew of no other jacketed copy of this title. Collects six stories including the title fantasy, several Christmas ghost stories, and the important science fiction novel, "The Secret of Apollonius Septrio," a tale of the evolution of man and the fate of a scientist who discovers a means to prolong human life and suffers a bizarre fate in the far future. According to Barron, *The Guide to Supernatural Fiction* 952: "...one of the most imaginative early science fiction stories of evolution and one-way time travel." *Hannibal's Man* is a fantasy about a couple on vacation in Switzerland who discover a Carthaginian frozen in a glacier; the Carthaginian is revived and visits modern-day Carthage and Rome. He is overly emotional and prone to violence, and wants to buy the man's wife. Eventually, [spoiler alert] the Carthaginian falls into a crevasse and is refrozen. Although considered by some as a fantasy it is referenced in *Bleiler* as a very early "sleeper awakes" story. *Bleiler* 1232, Clareson *Science Fiction in America* 464. An uncommon tile, previously unknown in jacket, and by all evidence the earliest science fiction novel to appear in a dust jacket.
Item #392978
