Title: Memoirs of ****. Commonly known by the Name of George Psalmanazar; A Reputed Native of Formosa. Written by himself In order to be published after his Death. Containing An Account of his Education, Travels, Adventures […]
Description: <p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align:justify;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Full title:</b></span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <span style="color:#212529;">Memoirs of ****. Commonly
known by the Name of George Psalmanazar; A Reputed Native of Formosa. Written
by himself In order to be published after his Death. Containing An Account of
his Education, Travels, Adventures, Connections, Literary Productions, and Pretended
Conversion from Heathenism to Christianity; which last proved the Occasion of
his being brought over into this Kingdom, and passing for a Proselyte, and a Member
of the Church of England.</span></span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></p><p> </p>

<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align:justify;"><span class="marclinepart"><span lang="nl-be" style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#212529;background:#FFFFFF;" xml:lang="nl-be">8vo. f. [1] (blank),
[1] (plate), pp. ii, 364, f. [1] (blank). </span></span><span class="marclinepart"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#212529;background:#FFFFFF;">Signatures: [A<sup>3</sup>] B-Z<sup>8</sup> Aa<sup>4
</sup>Bb<sup>2</sup>. </span></span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">Calf. Gilt spine with elevated bars and green panel.
Plate with coat of arms of the Edwards and Urren Families. Welsh motto “Heb
Dduw Heb Dduw a Digon.” </span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#212529;">Ful-page engraved
portrait of Mr. George Psalmanazar facing title page.</span></p><p></p>

<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align:justify;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></p><p> </p>

<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align:justify;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">First edition of this work by the
mysterious French refugee ‘George Psalmanazar’ (his true name has never been
discovered), who claimed to be a native of the then-unfamiliar island of
Formosa, and took English readership by storm with his almost entirely
imaginative History of Formosa (1704, revised in 1705 with the addition of
lurid cannibal details: see Bib# 552132/Fr# 666 and Bib# 1855507/Fr# 667 in
this collection). His invention of a Formosan language and alphabet led to a
‘Formosan’ version of the Lord’s Prayer, among other exotics in the engraved
Oratio Dominica of 1713 (Bib# 4103158/Fr# 670); and his alleged conversations
with inquisitive ladies, involving ‘several curious particulars not in his book’,
found a home in Richard Gwinnett’s novelistic memoir Pylades and Corinna,
1731-32 (Bib# 4103159/Fr# 671). Never wholly dismissed in his time as an
impostor, Psalmanazar went on to a busy, if underpaid career as a London
publisher’s hack, completing Samuel Palmer’s General History of Printing, 1732
(Bib# 1918752/Fr# 672) – which, perhaps not coincidentally, contains a
description of a ‘newly discover’d’ Gutenberg publication of Strassburg, 1458,
in reality a forged imprint tacked on to a 1472 Eggestein edition of St Gregory
– and providing Emanuel Bowen with no fewer than thirty anonymous articles
toward his massive Complete System of Geography (1747; see Bib# 4103162/Fr# 674
for the appropriate extracts, in which Psalmanazar confessed for the first time
to his impostures).</span></p><p></p>

<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align:justify;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></p><p> </p>

<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align:justify;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">The current work is his final confession.
It was published posthumously by his widow, and while sufficiently contrite,
preserves the mystery of his own origins and true name, and promulgates many
further suspect details. See also F. J. Foley, The great Formosan impostor. St
Louis, 1968, pp. 40-41, 56; English Short Title Catalogue Online, <span class="marclinepart"><span style="color:#212529;background:#FFFFFF;">T139486; </span></span>A.
Freeman, “Hoax and Forgery, Whimsy and Fraud: Taxonomic Reflections on the
Bibliotheca Fictiva,” in W. Stephens &amp; E. Havens (eds.), <span class="marclinepart"><span style="color:#212529;">Literary
forgery in early modern Europe, 1450-1800, </span><span style="color:#212529;background:#FFFFFF;">Baltimore, </span><span style="color:#212529;">2018, 23-24.</span></span></span></p><p></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></p><p> </p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/catalog/bib_411093" rel="ugc nofollow"><span style="color:#4B64FF;background:#FFFFFF;">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins
University catalog record.</span></a></span></p><p></p>