fantasy

One of the finer examples of illustrative fantasy reminiscent of a Jules Verne story, this sheet music march from 1907 is in excellent condition.  It is from the Bella C. Landauer Collection of Aeronautical Sheet Music in the National Air and Space Museum Library.  

This fanciful work by a popular author of children’s stories, histories, and genealogy is a “Mother Goose” style rhyme and story which was published in 1902. It depicts children and their families being visited by children from the moon and their adventures together. It is amply illustrated, but in need of extensive preservation treatment. It is part of the National Air & Space Museum Library's collection of fiction works that focus on fantasies about life on other worlds.

This copy of one of Jules Verne’s most celebrated adventure tales has an elusive past. With no publication date, an annotation on its inside cover dated ‘1925,’ and a blind stamp minted 1932 on the title page from the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences, this book presents just as much wonder itself as the story it features. The Smithsonian Libraries Research Annex (SLRA) discovered that this copy of Verne’s work, among others, had been released by Chicago-based publisher M.A. Donohue in the early part of the Twentieth Century.

Irish author Thomas Keightley, who was active during the 19th century, is considered a pioneer in the field of modern folklore studies. In his groundbreaking work, "The Fairy Mythology," he concludes that similar myths developed in different locations spontaneously, in the vein of the Brothers Grimm's approach, in which they compared the myths of one region to similar tales in other, unrelated regions. This upended the widely held belief that there was a common source to similar myths.