FLAMMARION, Camille.

£7,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Autograph manuscript titled "Voyage sur la Planete Mars" and signed on the last page. An unpublished nine-page article that deftly displays the astronomer and spiritualist's distinctive blend of fact and fiction when writing about his favourite subject: Mars and the life thereon. It is accompanied by a skilled sketch by Flammarion of Mars, as seen from his private observatory, and two autograph letters signed from him to the commissioning editor of the piece.Alongside H. G. Wells, Percival Lowell, and Giovanni Schiaparelli, Flammarion (1842-1925) championed the "Mars mania" of the 1890s. Having made his name as a public lecturer and scientific popularizer, Flammarion founded the Société astronomique de France and established an observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge, which "became something of a nerve centre for Martian research" (Sheehan, p. 169). He cemented his authority with La planète Mars et ses conditions d'habitabilité, a copiously illustrated two-volume encyclopaedia (1892 & 1909). It was the most comprehensive book on the subject to date and enjoyed phenomenal success. Like Lowell, Flammarion "was as devout about parapsychology as he was about Mars, and the two subjects often commingled" in his writings (Crossley, p. 130).He wrote prolifically on Mars, for books, magazines, and newspapers, for academic and lay audiences, and often on commission. This article is a pertinent example of the latter and appears to be unpublished in its present form. In the first letter, dated 25

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