Les terres du ciel voyage astronomique sur les autres mondes ..

Paris: Marpon, 1884. ELEVENTH EDITION. With 8 color plates including 2 woodbury photographs of the moon, all with tissue guards, numerous black and white text illustrations and charts, many full-page. Original publisher’s pictorial cloth, worn; interior with some browning, otherwise a very good copy. Eleventh edition. Flammarion pursues his stand on astronomical pluralism, the belief that there exists numerous other worlds harboring life and, in particular, intelligent life. With maps, illustrations, photographs, graphs and diagrams, he creates a significantly scientific basis for the ability of life to flourish on other planets. For each of the planets in the solar system, he details the historical basis of the concept of alien life, as well as the geography, meteorology, and other scientific details of the planet.

Flammarion (1842-1925) had a passion for astronomy from childhood and was largely self-taught. His appealing literary style made him the most important and successful scientific popularizer of his day, authoring more than seventy works, and despite his eccentric positions he probably did more to encourage public interest in astronomy than anyone else. He served for some years at the Paris Observatory and at the Bureau of Longitudes, but in 1883 he set up a private observatory at Juvisy (near Paris) and continued his studies, especially of double and multiple stars and of the Moon and Mars. He and another French writer, J. H. Rosny, were the first to popularize the notion of beings that were genuinely alien and not merely minor variants on humans and other terrestrial forms.