Ralph, James
Entry updated 12 August 2018. Tagged: Author.
(1695-1762) American-born historian, controversialist and author, in UK from 1724; his Satirical play, The Astrologer (1744 chap) – remotely based on the mistaken-doubles comedy, Albumazar (1615), by Thomas Tomkis (circa 1580-1634) – targets the tropes and lunacies of what we now call Proto SF, as conveyed through its fatuous protagonists' attempts to make sense of the vision of Life on Other Worlds afforded by a new telescope. [JC]
James Ralph
born ?Elizabethtown, New Jersey: 1695
died Chiswick [now London]: 24 January 1762
works
- The Astrologer (London: M Cooper, 1744) [chap: binding unknown/]
about the author
- Laird Okie. "Ralph, James (d. 1762)" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 2004) [encyclopedia: see link below, accessed 16 February 2012: hb/]
links
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