Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. by ABBOTT, Edwin Abbott, as "A Square - 1884: With Illustrations by the Author.

London: Seeley & Co.,, 1884. Contributing to the Enlargement of the Imagination First edition of this cult classic. "At once a lesson in higher dimensional geometry, a social satire, and an expression of religious principle, this work gives lasting testimony to Abbott's genius as a teacher and to his literary and moral imagination" (ODNB). This copy has a fitting contemporary association, with the ownership stamp of Oxford mathematician Henry Tresawna Gerrans (1858-1921), fellow of Worcester College and Lecturer in Mathematics at the university from 1882.
Abbott was the headmaster of the City of London School for nearly a quarter of a century, his innovative methods winning the school "the distinction of providing the highest intellectual training". Essentially a mathematical fantasia describing a society of two-dimensional geometrical shapes, the denizens of Flatland, the book is dedicated "To The Inhabitants of Space in General... by a Humble Native of Flatland In the Hope that Even as he was Initiated into the Mysteries of Three Dimensions Having been previous conversant with Only Two So the Citizens of that Celestial Region May aspire yet higher and higher To the Secrets of Four Five or even Six Dimensions Thereby contributing To the Enlargement of The Imagination". A revised edition followed in the same year, the book being surprisingly successful for such an oddity. After Einstein's publication of his general theory of relativity, with its suggestion of a fourth dimension, the book was reappraised for its imaginative yet scientific engagement with the idea of extra dimensions. Octavo. Original plain card wrappers in the pictorial japon jacket with turn-ins. Illustrated throughout by the author. The book itself sound, and clean within but for a few stray spots, the japon jacket split at spine with loss, but otherwise intact, single vertical stain mark to front panel, and some darkening around edges, nonetheless a good copy of this fragile book. Locke, p.203; "A classic of the topological sub-genre of science fiction".