THE MOON HOAX; OR, A DISCOVERY THAT THE MOON HAS A VAST POPULATION OF HUMAN BEINGS..

New York: William Gowans, 1859. Later edition. Shallow chipping to edges of front cover, front cover dust soiled, penciled number to upper left front cover, neat ink stamped name to upper right front cover, spine intact save for slight loss at base, narrow ragged tear along base of title page. A very good copy with clean contents with pages being quite supple. Copies of this book in the original wrappers are uncommon. (31974). Octavo, pp. [i-v] vi [7] 8-63 [64: blank], frontispiece ("the Moon, as seen by Lord Rosse's Telescope. 1856"), original light tan wrappers printed in black, sewn. A reprint of Locke's successful hoax perpetrated in the NEW YORK SUN, in August 1835, which pretended to reveal a discovery that men and animals existed on the moon. The revelations, supposedly reprinted from the actually defunct EDINBURGH JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, pretended to reveal a discovery that men and animals existed on the moon and were so cleverly wrought that, for a short time, the report was given credence in scientific circles in the United States and Europe. The report was soon denounced as a hoax by the public press and Richard Adams Locke (1800-1871), a reporter for the SUN, was identified as the perpetrator of the "ingenious astronomical hoax." Interest in the lunar discoveries increased the SUN's circulation to more than nineteen thousand, the largest of any daily of that time. According to William Gowans who reprinted the story in 1859, Locke's account created such public interest that the owners of the SUN published sixty thousand copies of it in pamphlet form. The pamphlet was published in September 1835 and every copy was sold in less than a month. Nevertheless, the 1835 printings are rare and only a handful of copies survive. Anatomy of Wonder (1981) 1-137. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 1348 and 1349. Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), p. 728. Locke, Voyages in Space 130. Bleiler (1978), p. 125 (citing earlier editions). Reginald 09129C. Wright (I) 1704a (citing an undated 11-page edition probably published in 1835).