An historical and geographical description of Formosa, an Island subject to the Emperor of Japan giving An Account of the Religion, Customs, Manners &c. of the Inhabitants. Together with a Relation of what happen'd to the Author in his Travels [...]

Full title: An historical and geographical description of Formosa, an Island subject to the Emperor of Japan giving An Account of the Religion, Customs, Manners &c. of the Inhabitants. Together with a Relation of what happen'd to the Author in his Travels; particularly his Conferences with the Jesuits, and others, in several Parts of Europe. Also the History and Reasons of his Conversion to Christianity, with his Objections against it (in defence of Paganism) and their Answers. To which is prefix’d A Preface in Vindication of himself from the Reflections of a Jesuit lately come to China, with an Account of what passed between them. By George Psalmanaazaar, a Native of the said Island, now in London. Illustrated with 16 pp. Photogravures.

4to.pp. xlviii, 288. 16 plates (1 folded). Calf. Copy no. 8 of 750, part II of The Library of Impostors. Front flyleaf inscribed by the editor “To little Mary with love from Normy, XMAS 1926.” A fabrication by ‘George Psalmanazar,’ a mysterious French refugee whose real name is unknown. "Psalmanazar [...] wrote in Latin, and the main portion of his manuscript was translated by Mr. Oswald. [...] What was not due to his own imagination he borrowed from Verenius's 'Descriptio regni Japoni et Siam' (Amsterdam, 1649) or Candidius's 'Voyages'." (L. Stephen & S. Lee (eds.), Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, 1917, vol. 16, p. 440). Psalmanazar 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). See also F. J. Foley, The great Formosan impostor. St Louis, 1968, pp. 40-41, 56; English Short Title Catalogue Online, T139486; A. Freeman, “Hoax and Forgery, Whimsy and Fraud: Taxonomic Reflections on the Bibliotheca Fictiva,” in W. Stephens & E. Havens (eds.), Literary forgery in early modern Europe, 1450-1800, Baltimore, 2018, 23-24.

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