Cloth binding. Black lettering with gilt title on front cover.

Lucianus of Samosata (120-180 AD). His talents as a writer had great influence on philosophers like Thomas More and Erasmus. Also Rabelais, Cyrano the Bergerac and Swift were under the influence of Lucianus’ many sided talents.

In ‘True Histories’ (“Trips to the Moon”) the main character travels to a weird continent where almost anything is possible. During his travels there he visits the moon ( the main subject of True Stories aka Trips to the moon). Other things happened also. At a certain moment he finds himself in the belly of a whale. These comical absurdities are described with the accuracy of a traveling guide.
Lucianus is the only writer in Antiquity who used Fantasy elements. Some of them could be defined as Science-Fiction. And what makes his writings really outstanding is his great sense of humour. Lucianus was a very gifted and prolific author and yet many critics have stigmatized him as a writer of less importance. I hope that this edition will proof to you that those critics are wrong.

Thomas Francklin (1721 – 15 March 1784) was an English academic, clergyman, writer and dramatist.

For most of his life Francklin wrote for the press and for the stage. Two of his plays were successful through good acting. He brought out in 1757 a periodical paper of his own composition entitled The Centinel, and he was one of the contributors to Tobias Smollett’s Critical Review. Samuel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds were among his friends, and through their influence he became chaplain to the Royal Academy on its foundation, and on Oliver Goldsmith’s death in 1774 succeeded to the professorship of ancient history.

With other literary men he was unpopular. One of his victims in the Critical Review was Arthur Murphy, who solaced his feelings of indignation in “A Poetical Epistle to Samuel Johnson, A.M.” Charles Churchill, in the Rosciad, sneeringly says that ‘he sicken’d at all triumphs but his own.’

Francklin’s most solid works consisted of translations and tragedies. His first was an anonymous rendering of Cicero’s treatise, Of the Nature of the Gods; it appeared in 1741, was reissued in 1775, and, after revision by Charles Duke Yonge, formed a part of one of the volumes in Bohn’s Classical Library. In 1749 he published The Epistles of Phalaris translated from the Greek; to which are added some select epistles of the most eminent Greek writers. His translation of the tragedies of Sophocles was long considered the best in the English language. It came out in 1759, and was reprinted in 1809 and 1832; large selections from it were included in Ezekiel Sanford’s British Poets, vol. l., and it was included in Henry Morley’s Universal Library (vol. xliv.), while a separate impression of the Œdipus Tyrannus was made in 1806.

His version of The Works of Lucian from the Greek, which was produced in 1780 in two volumes, and appeared in a second edition in 1781. The whole work was dedicated to Richard Rigby, and parts were inscribed to other eminent men. His translation of Lucian’s Trips to the Moon formed vol. LXXI of Cassell’s National Library, edited by Henry Morley.