Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions.
Original price
£450.00
-
Original price
£450.00
Original price
£450.00
£450.00
-
£450.00
Current price
£450.00
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London: Seeley & Co.. 1884.
Second edition. 8vo. 217x185mm. pp.xvi, 102, [2bl]. With illustrations by the author. Original illustrated limp vellum covered card. Vellum worn, particularly at the spine where there is some loss, corners rubbed. Hinge with upper cover is cracked but holding. Otherwise a very good copy of a fragile book. Upper cover has an ownership inscription. This second edition, issued in the same year as the first, included a six page preface in which a fictional interlocutor addressed, on behalf of Abbott/A Square two of the criticisms aimed at this strange book.
The first concerns the surprise of readers at the failure of Flatlanders to perceive thickness, and hence a third dimension, in a Line. Abbott (who is, lest we forget, a two dimensional Square) plays somewhat opaquely with the conceit before turning on his 3D Spaceland critics for their refusal to entertain the possibility of a Fourth Dimension. "...it is as natural for us Flatlanders to lock up a Square for preaching the Third Dimension, as it is for you Spacelanders to lock up a Cube for preaching the Fourth. Alas, how strong a family likeness runs through blind and persecuting humanity in all Dimensions!"
The second criticism was that Abbott was a "woman-hater". Women in Flatland are mere Lines, using their pointed ends to stab people. In reply, we are told that A Square has modified his personal views but there is, by way of conclusion, a gloriously condescending dig at the world (our world) of three dimensions. If A Square seemed misogynistic it was because he "identified himself (perhaps too closely) with the views generally adopted by Flatland and (as he has been informed) even by Spaceland, Historians; in whose pages (until very recent times) the destinies of Women and of the masses of mankind have seldom been deemed worthy of mention and never of careful consideration".
