Abbott, Edwin A
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1838-1926) UK clergyman, academic and author whose most noted work, published originally as by A Square, is Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884; rev 1884) (see Dimensions). Narrated and illustrated by Mr Square, the novel falls into two parts. The first is a highly entertaining description of the two-dimensional world of Flatland, in which inhabitants' shapes establish their (planar) hierarchical status. In the second part, Mr Square travels in a dream to the one-dimensional universe of Lineland, whose inhabitants are unable to conceive of a two-dimensional universe; he is in turn visited from Spaceland by a three-dimensional visitor – named Sphere because he is spherical – whom Mr Square cleverly persuades to believe in four-dimensional worlds as well. Flatland is a study in Mathematics and Perception, and has remained popular since its first publication. [JC]
see also: Forgotten Futures; History of SF.
Edwin Abbott Abbott
born St Marylebone, Middlesex [now London]: 20 December 1838
died Hampstead, London: 12 October 1926
works
- Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (London: Seeley and Company, 1884) as by A Square [illus/pb/Edwin A Abbott]
- Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions: New and Revised Edition (London: Seeley, 1884) as by A Square [exp rev of above: pb/Edwin A Abbott]
about the author
- Everett F Bleiler. Science-Fiction: The Early Years: A Full Description of More Than 3,000 Science-Fiction Stories ... (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1990) [nonfiction: pp1-2: hb/nonpictorial]
links
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