Madden, Samuel
Entry updated 26 February 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1686-1765) Irish clergyman and author, nicknamed Premium Madden for his philanthropical work, whose Proto SF novel, Memoirs of the Twentieth Century: Being Original Letters of State Under George the Sixth [for full subtitle see Checklist] (1733) anonymous, takes as usual in eighteenth-century works the theoretical platform of the future as an enabling device to comment – in Madden's case with sufficient Satirical point for his text to be immediately suppressed – on contemporary events; Memoirs may be the first such text, however, to locate its narrative in a specific period, in this case a progression of events extending into the twentieth century. Madden was a friend of Jonathan Swift.
The ascription to Madden of the authorship of The Reign of George VI, 1900-1925 (1763) (see listing in Anonymous) may have come about through some similarity in the title, but seems unfounded. Madden had been forced to withdraw and destroy copies of Memoirs of the Twentieth Century, and in any case would have been in his late seventies when the second title appeared. [JC]
Samuel Molyneux Madden
born Dublin, Ireland: 23 December 1686
died Manor Waterhouse, near Newtonbutler, Fermanagh, Ireland: 31 December 1765
works
- Memoirs of the Twentieth Century: Being Original Letters of State Under George the Sixth, Relating to the Most Important Events in Great-Britain and Europe, as to Church and State, Arts and Sciences, Trade, Taxes and Treaties, Peace and War, and Characters of the Greatest Persons of those Times, from the Middle of the Eighteenth to the End of the Twentieth Century; and the World; Received and Published for the Instruction of All Eminent Statesmen, Churchmen, Patriots, Politicians, Projectors, Papists, and Protestants: in Six Volumes: Vol 1 (London: John Osborn and Thomas Longman, Davis and Batley at the sign of the Ship; plus other bookseller/publishers, all London, 1733) [no further volumes issued: binding unknown/]
- Futuristic Fiction, Utopia, and Satire in the Age of the Enlightenment: Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2023) [full annotated text of the above: full title (embedded in text) as above: plus book-length study of Madden: edited with essay and notes by Giulia Iannuzzi: in the publisher's Histories in Motion series: hb/from Gerard Dou]
links
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