Wilfrid De Fonvielle

Adventures in the Air, Being Memorable Experiences of Great Aeronauts reprints Wilfrid De Fonvielle's book with an English translation by John S. Keltie. Keltie, in his preface, describes his omission of "several passages likely to interest only French readers" while including "several additions made bearing mainly on the history of ballooning in England" (pg. v). These changes are rather obvious as De Fonvielle's narrative proceeds roughly chronologically, with the occasional deviation to follow a given topic, and the references to English ballooning interrupt this narrative. Either the author or translator wrote off the field of American aeronautics, writing, "The facility with which American journals accept the most extraordinary stories, and the vague and contradictory manner with which they report the most interesting aeronautical facts, are not calculated to give us a high opinion of their aerial knowledge" (pg. 286). Worse, the American aeronaut John Wise, one of the most accomplished of his generation, appears here as "Wyse" (pg. 286).
Those familiar with the history of flight and aeronautics will find several of the most well-known anecdotes, though presented with the biases of their own time. Included as well are stories with which the readers may have been more acquainted in the late nineteenth century, but which have fallen out of the annals of ballooning. This volume will appeal to people interested in the topic as well as those interested in the history of science in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.… (más)