Anno Domini 2000 : or, Woman’s destiny. (First edition, colonial issue)

A$1,000 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

First edition · Limited edition

/ by Sir Julius Vogel, K.C.M.G. London : Hutchinson and Co., 1889. Colonial edition . Octavo (195 x 130 mm), publisher s gilt-lettered pictorial grey cloth (boards rubbed and lightly marked, corners bumped; spine sunned and marked, frayed at ends); frontispiece portrait of the author, pp. viii, [1]-331, [4 publisher s advertisements]; newspaper cutting to verso of front endpaper resulting in offsetting to half title, ownership inscription of Melbourne bibliophile Herbert George Fricker (1887-1951) dated 1941 to verso of frontispiece, his stamp to dedication page, his pencilled brief note re. significant aspects of this work to the otherwise blank page [1], and his very occasional underlining in red pencil; otherwise clean throughout, a good example. The only work of fiction by the distinguished, liberal-minded New Zealand statesman Sir Julius Vogel (1835-1899), Anno Domini 2000 : or, Woman s destiny is a remarkably prescient one for its time. It is a utopian novel set in a world of the future in which women have largely achieved social equality and political suffrage, and occupy positions of authority. The story follows the fortunes of its female protagonist, young New Zealand woman Hilda Fitzherbert, Undersecretary for Home Affairs in the Imperial Federation (an imagined version of the British Empire in the year 2000); her nemesis is the Australian arch-villain, Sir Reginald Paramatta. The book is regarded as the first science fiction novel by a New Zealand writer. The annua

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.