L' A N Deux Mille Quatre Cent Quarante

1786. New" Edition. Hardcover. Acceptable. L' A N Deux Mille Quatre Cent QuaranteReve s'il en fut JamaisSuivi DeL'Homme De FerSongeNouvelle EditionAvec Figures 3 TomesPublié: 1786~ English Translation ~The Year 2440Dream if it ever wasFollowed byIron manDreamNew EditionWith Illustrations (frontispiece)3 VolumesPublished: 1786**Published anonymously by: Louis Sébastien Mercier (***there is no statement of authorship in these volumes, please see the "about this book" section for a full explanation***) Description: full leather covers with marble design, page edges stained black / spotted - each volume presents a frontispiece illustration by Clément-Pierre Marillier, but no other illustrations.Volume 1 - pagination in this book is difficult, seems non-standard, description is as follows: ffep, half title page with blank verso, blank page with frontispiece on verso, title page with statement on rear, a iii (author's "view") with vi on rear, vii - xvi, 1-380, [i-vi].Volume 2 - [i-viii] ,1-381, [i-v] (includes end papers)Volume 3 - [i-viii] , 1-312 , [i-vi] (includes end papers)About this book: (The Year 2440) L’An 2440: Rêve s’il en fut jamais presents a simple plot line. The narrator goes to bed after a heated conversation with an English visitor to Paris. When he awakens, he finds that he has slept for some six hundred and seventy years— it is now “L’an de grâce mmccccxl,” the year of Mercier’s 700th birthday. The rest of the novel is a forty-one-chapter-long stroll through Paris in which the narrator discovers the twenty-fifth century, which has been perfected according to Enlightenment ideals, both in France and abroad. In the final chapter, after he sees a disconsolate Louis XIV among the ruins of Versailles, the narrator is bitten by an adder, ending both dream and book. The first anonymous publication of L’An 2440 in 1771 was an immediate success. It went through at least twenty editions and many reprints during the author’s lifetime. There were also numerous translations in spite of the novel’s condemnation by the Holy See in 1773 and by the Spanish Inquisition in 1778. In 1786, Mercier published a much expanded edition, in three volumes, followed by a short allegorical text entitled L’homme de fer, songe. He also disawoved all other editions since 1771 as faulty and shameless “falsifications” in a preface signed by “L’auteur de l’An 2440.” With the original bans still in place, and the added material even more provocative, the author’s name was once again absent from the title page.Note: This 3 volume set from 1786 includes the above mentioned state. The last page of this statement with the "L'auteur de l'An 2440" can be seen in the fifth photo in this listing.Condition: Used - good - excellent set for the age - wear to leather at spine ends and corners - each volume bows out at the edge slightly - volume three has deterioration to the leather at the lower front spine fold (see photo) - some scuffs to leather over boards - sound binding - normal wear and aging to paper.