Découvertes dans la lune, faites au Cap de Bonne-Espérance

First french translation of the article originally published in the New York Sun in August 1825 under the title Great astronomical discoveries lately made by Sir John Herschel, along with the content of the five subsequent installments.

Bradel binding in full marbled paper-covered boards, flat spine, vertical title label with a small chip, modern binding.

The attribution of this monumental astronomical hoax to the astronomer John Herschel (1792–1871) is of course fictitious: the text was in fact written by Richard Adam Locke, a journalist at the New York Sun (though he never admitted authorship). Locke had reported on Herschel’s actual observations of the southern sky from the Cape of Good Hope observatory between 1834 and 1838. He then devised this famous fabrication, which fooled many readers (including the socialist Victor Considerant, who published a commented edition as early as 1836). It described the "inhabitants of the Moon," their customs, appearance, environment, and so on. Despite a preface with a generally satirical tone—meant to alert the discerning reader—the hoax achieved wide success. It took several weeks before the deception was uncovered, and the Sun never issued a retraction.