Astræa's Return or, the Halcyon Days of France in the Year 2440: A Dream: Translated from the French, by Harriot Augusta Freeman
Contributions
- Harriet Augusta Freeman
- author
Related resources
- is paratext of
- Astræa's Return or, the Halcyon Days of France in the Year 2440: A Dream: Translated from the French, by Harriot Augusta Freeman translation has paratext
Notes
Original epigraph replaced by one from Dante's 'Del Paradiso'. "Printed for the Translator; and sold by her at 13, Moore Place, 13 Vauxhall Rd, Lambeth. Also by…"
The preface is a dedication to the English diplomat and politician, Sir John Coxe Hippisley, signed "Stanhope Street, June 16, 1797. "The present translation is enriched with some additional chapters, which I fortunately met with ere the whole manuscript was ready for the press".
Also contains a list of subscribers, including several prestigious names.
Everett C. Wilkie Jr. states that, "This translation, by modern standards, is inferior to Hooper's and has remained secondary to it". All chapter titles, except two, are omitted, and these are are now introduced by extensive poetic quotations, appropriate to their contents. All Mercier's long footnotes have been omitted to make this version more "elegant" and readable, although Freeman has added two of her own on p.102 & 247-48. The extra material from the expanded 1786 edition is inserted without comment near the end of the book. This is the only translation into English of the expanded three-volume French edition.
See Wilkie, 'Mercier's '"L'An 2440": Its publishing history during the author's lifetime, Parts I & II', in Harvard Library Bulletin vol.XXXII (1) & (4), Fall & Winter 1984: 5-35 & 348-400).