SERIMAN Zaccaria Viages de Enrique Wanton a la tierras incognitas australes y al pais de la monas ; en donde se expresan la costumbres, caracter, ciencias, y policia de estos extraordinarios habitantes. Traducidos del idioma ingles al italiano por don Joaquin de Guzman.

See Palau, 373957 (note) and Sabin 79229 (for the 1769 Madrid edition) ; Gove, The Imaginary Voyage in Prose and Fiction, pp. 114-160 ; Gibson and Patrick, Utopias and Dystopias, 1500-1750.

First Spanish translation. Mixed set with volumes 3 and 4 in first edition, volumes 1 and 2 in second edition.

Albeit the indication on the title page this work is not a translation from the original English edition. It was written in Italian by Zaccaria Seriman and published in Venice in 1749, followed by an important revised and enlarged edition in 1764. Seriman is considered a precursor of Italian science-fiction.

“An ideal work, abounding with character, sentiment and philosophical observation” (Sabin, for the English language edition 1772).

The illustration comprises an engraved allegorical frontispice and 12 copper plates by Patino and includes a leopard fight and a presentation of acrobats.

“Dampier’s and Swift’s use of the simian trope of as a way to capture Antipodal monstrousness was taken further in the utopian novel Viaggi di Enrico Wanton alle Terre Incognite Australi by Zaccaria Seriman, first published in 1749 and expanded in 1764. The first part of the novel takes the protagonist, a young Englishman named Enrico (Henry), to the Antipod rego delle scimie, the kingdom of the apes.

As a classic antipodal inversion, the simian kingdom is a satire clearly aimed at Seriman’s hometown of Venice, lampooning in true Enlightenment fashion the lagoon republic’s baroque refinement of manners and customs. Antipodal monstrosity serves here again as a form of embodied satire that articulates by way of physiologial otherness a feeling of alienating sameness. In other words, Seriman’s kingdom the apes is not monstruous because of its beastlike inhabitants, but because it raises the question of whether the Antipodeans ape their European counterparts, or vice versa. Monstrosity in Seriman’s Antipodal utopia is, in the end, an excess of sameness” (Daniel Hempel, in : Australia as the Antipodal Utopia, 2019, p. 119).

Very good copy.