Poetical Drifts of Thought; or, Problems of Progress… The formation of the Solar System - Evolution - Human Progress - Possibilities of the Future - Including Spicy Explanatory Matter in Prose
Detroit: Lyman E. Stowe, 1884. 24x16.5cm: 319pp. First Edition. Green cloth-covered boards with beveled edges, decorated and illustrated in gilt and black. Victorian design stamped to rear board. Extensively illustrated, including a magnificent three-foot foldout woodcut view of Detroit’s waterfront from Windsor, Ontario. Rubbing to front cover and spine, causing lightening of the green cloth in some areas. Small indentation near spine tail. Folded corner on p. 135 due to publisher’s error, with an associated small closed tear, slightly impacting illustration. Several leaves uncut. Better Than Very Good.
The first of several great works of American outsider speculative verse, from Lyman E. Stowe (1843-1919), the Detroit picture framer, occultist, Greenbacker, bike enthusiast, astrologer, and occasional publisher on esoteric topics. Part natural history, part musings, and part futuristic imagining, Stowe posits air warfare, the revival of the dead, the production of seamless garments from water and electricity, and food replaced by nutritive gasses inhaled through tubes. His lengthy utopian poem on Detroit of the year 2100 predicts a future that involves covering the entire city in glass and growing tropical fruit.
Price: $1,000.00
Item #10440