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Bradshaw, William R

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

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(1851-1927) Irish-born editor and author, in the US from 1883, whose The Goddess of Atvatabar: Being the History of the Discovery of the Interior World and Conquest of Atvatabar (1892) is set in a Symmesian Hollow Earth with an interior sun shining vertically overhead: "See how the shadow of every man surrounds his boots!". In his introduction, Julian Hawthorne asserts that romances like Bradshaw's will rightly soon supplant novels in the realistic tradition represented by Émile Zola. The civilization of Bradshaw's inner world features advanced forms of Transportation, including Airships and personal wings powered by "magnicity" (see Flying), and features a love cult whose devotees regard mild Sex without orgasm as leading to perpetual youth; but the protagonist, a visitor from above, kisses the eponymous goddess and all hell breaks loose: sexual arousal, civil war, the application of super-science (i.e. electricity or "magnicity") to bring about a monarchy, and trade relations with the surface (see Anthropology; Lost Worlds). The book is heavily illustrated. The claim that Bradshaw was brought to America in infancy, which is to be found in Wikipedia and elsewhere, is mistaken. [JC]

see also: Linguistics.

William Richard Bradshaw

born Ireland: January 1851

died New York: 19 July 1927

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