Bray, John Francis
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1809-1897) US author, in the UK 1822-1842; he published several economic tracts, some of them radical, like his first, Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy (1839). Of sf interest is A Voyage from Utopia to Several Unknown Regions of the World: by Yarbfg: Translated from the American (written 1841-1842; 1957), which anticipated William Dean Howells's technique of presenting the views of a visitor from the Utopia, which is located in an unknown Archipelago. The narrator visits various civilized countries, their names distorted through his attempt to comprehend their various native languages, so that London becomes Londo, and Ireland, a land run by "Catholos pestos", becomes Erino; and so forth. The visitor's responses to the labour conditions and abiding hypocrisies characteristic of the lands his visits are outraged, republican, and satirical (see Satire). Bray may have thought the work unpublishable in his time; in any case, his move back to America may have frustrated any plans to publish; the manuscript was discovered in 1937. [JC]
John Francis Bray
born Washington, District of Columbia: 26 June 1809
died Pontiac, Michigan: 1 February 1897
works
- A Voyage from Utopia to Several Unknown Regions of the World: by Yarbfg: Translated from the American (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1957) [from the 1841 manuscript: edited by M F Lloyd-Prichard: hb/Brooks]
about the author
- Raymond John Howgego. Encyclopedia of Exploration: Invented and Apocryphal Narratives of Travel: A Comprehensive Guide to Invented, Imaginary, Apocryphal and Plagiarized Narratives of Travel by Land, Sea and Air, from the Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century (Potts Point, New South Wales: Hordern House Rare Books, 2013) [nonfiction: p55: hb/from J M W Turner]
links
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