Glances from The Moon; or Lucubrations gathered from the Miscellany of One Unknown

Cheltenham: Printed by S.Y.Griffith for Messrs Rivingtons 1824, 1824. First (and apparently only) edition. 8vo. 180x115mm. pp. xiv, [2], 304. Modern brown cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Internally very good with some toning to edges. Ex-library stamp on verso of title page. A nice copy of this collection of thirty-eight short essays on a variety of subjects including Materialism, Byron's Cain, A Mystery, Bulls, Fortune Telling, Sleep, Dreams, Atheism, Light, Sound, the Employment of Children in Churches, the Language of Birds and Nonentity of Matter. An odd book. We have been unable to trace the identity of the author. It appears in this one edition only. There is no obvious theme linking the thirty-eight essays (although the metaphysical, the mystical and the ethereal are pre-occupations) and it seems that the pieces were written purely for this collection as they exist nowhere else. We are not alone in being perplexed. The Monthly Review of September to December 1824 said of it: "There is a strange mixture of sense and nonsense, ingenious trifling, sarcasm, and philosophical (not religious) scepticism in these lunatic lucubrations". The book is, the reviewer goes on, "the production of some one who indulges his speculations, at all events, to amuse himself. We always respect an original thinker. The sparks of thought fly upwards; some will become extinct without contact; others, the wildest among them perhaps, may fall on some combustible materials, and be the means of illuminating a dark horizon". A real curiosity.