The Mummy! – Wikipedia
1827 Jane C. Loudon novel
Title web page of the 1828 second version |
|
| Creator | Anon (really Jane Webb) |
|---|---|
| Authentic title | The Mummy! A Story of the Twenty-Second Century |
| Nation | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Style | Science fiction |
|
Publication date |
1827 |
The Mummy! A Story of the Twenty-Second Century is an 1827 three-volume novel written by Jane Webb (later Jane C. Loudon). It issues the Egyptian mummy of Cheops, who’s introduced again to life within the yr 2126. The novel describes a future stuffed with superior expertise,[1] and was the primary English-language story to function a reanimated mummy.[2]
After her father’s loss of life, making her an orphan on the age of 17, Webb discovered that:[3]
on the winding up of his affairs that it might be essential to do one thing for my assist. I had written an odd, wild novel, referred to as the Mummy, by which I had laid the scene within the twenty-second century, and tried to foretell the state of enchancment to which this nation would possibly probably arrive.
She might have drawn inspiration from the final style for something pharaonic, impressed by the French researches through the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt; the 1821 public unwrappings of Egyptian mummies in a theatre close to Piccadilly, which she might have attended as a lady; and, very doubtless, the 1818 novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.[4] As Shelley had written of Frankenstein’s creation, “A mummy once more endued with animation couldn’t be so hideous as that wretch,” which can have triggered her later idea. In any case, at many factors she offers in better readability with parts from the sooner e book such because the loathing for the much-desired object and the fast arrest for crime and try and lie one’s means out of it.[4] Nevertheless, not like the Frankenstein monster, the hideous revived Cheops isn’t shuffling round dealing out horror and loss of life, however giving canny recommendation on politics and life to those that befriend him.[4] In some methods The Mummy! could also be seen as her response to themes in Frankenstein: her mummy particularly says he’s allowed life solely by divine favour, slightly than being indisputably vivified solely by mortal science, and so forth, as Hopkins’ 2003 essay covers intimately.[4]
In contrast to many early science fiction works (Shelley’s The Last Man, and The Reign of King George VI, 1900–1925, written anonymously in 1763[5]), Loudon didn’t painting the long run as her personal day with solely political modifications. She stuffed her world with foreseeable modifications in expertise, society, and even style. The hero, Edric Montague, lived in a peaceable and Catholic England below the rule of Queen Claudia.[4] Her courtroom girls put on trousers and hair ornaments of managed flame. Surgeons and attorneys could also be steam-powered automatons. Air journey, by balloon, is commonplace. A type of Web is predicted in it. Apart from attempting to account for the revivification of the mother in scientific phrases—galvanic shock slightly than incantations—”she embodied concepts of scientific progress and discovery, that now learn like prophecies”[6] to these later within the nineteenth century. Most of the incidents within the e book may be seen as satirical or humorous. Her social attitudes have resulted on this e book being ranked amongst feminist novels.[4]
The Mummy!: Or a Story of the Twenty-Second Century was printed anonymously in 1827 by Henry Colburn in three volumes, as was standard in that day so that every small quantity may very well be simply carried round. It drew many beneficial critiques, together with one in 1829 in The Gardener’s Magazine on the innovations proposed in it. In 1830, the 46-year-old reviewer, John Claudius Loudon, sought out the 22-year-old Webb, they usually married the subsequent yr.[7]
References[edit]
- ^ Hopkins, Lisa. “Jane C. Loudon’s ‘The Mummy!’“. Archived from the original on 24 December 2013.
- ^ Freeman, Richard (18 March 2009). “THE MUMMY in context”. European Journal of American Research. 4 (4–1). doi:10.4000/ejas.7566. ISSN 1991-9336.
- ^ Shigitatsu Antiquarian Books. Profile of Jane Webb Loudon (1807–1858) Archived 11 October 2016 on the Wayback Machine. Shigitatsu.com. Retrieved on 5 April 2012.
- ^ a b c d e f Lisa Hopkins, “Jane C. Loudon’s The Mummy!: Mary Shelley Meets George Orwell, and They Go in a Balloon to Egypt”, in Cardiff Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text, 10 (June 2003). Retrieved on 16 December 2019.
- ^ The reign of George VI. 1900–1925; a forecast written in the year 1763. [London] W. Niccoll, 1763, Printed in 1899, Archive.org. Retrieved on 5 April 2012.
- ^ Henry Gardiner Adams (1857). A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography; consisting of Sketches of all Women, who have been distinguished by great Talents, Strength of Character, Piety, Benevolence, or moral Virtue of any kind; forming a complete Record of Womanly Excellence or Ability: Edited by H. G. Adams. Groombridge. Retrieved 5 April 2012.
- ^ Parilla, Lesley. “(Not so) Secret life of a woman naturalist: Mrs. Jane C. Loudon 1807-1858”. Unbound. Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. Retrieved 30 December 2022.
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