Few cultural phenomena captured the popular imagination of late eighteenth-century Britain more intensely than the rage for air ballooning, or the “balloonomania” as critics sometimes called it. “The term balloon is not only in the mouth of every one, but all our world seems to be in the clouds,” declared a 1785 book titled London Unmask’d (137). The excitement had begun in France when the Montgolfier brothers launched the first human flight in front of the Royal Family and 100,000 spectators, on October 15, 1783. The first flight in England, by Vincento Lunardi the following September, attracted an estimated 150,000 spectators. The Morning Post reported that “St. Paul’s Cathedral took the advantage of Lunardi’s Balloon excursion, by raising the price, which used to be only twopence for going to the top, to two shillings, and both the galleries had a great number of spectators, many of whom in the stone gallery fell down the recesses and broke their shins, as they...
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Exhibit Bibliography
Primary Materials
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The Modern Atlantis; or, The Devil in an Air Balloon, Containing the Characters and Secret Memoirs of the Most Conspicuous Persons of High Quality, of Both Sexes, in the Island of Libertusia in the Western Ocean. London: Printed for G. Kearsley, 1784.
Raspe, Rudolph Erich, Baron Munchausen's Narrative Of His Marvellous Travels And Campaigns In Russia. Humbly Dedicated And Recommended To Country Gentlemen; And, If They Please, To Be Repeated As Their Own, After A Hunt, At Horse Races, In Watering-Places, And Other Such Polite Assemblies; Round The Bottle And Fire-Side. Oxford, 1786.
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The Wonderful Magazine, And Marvellous Chronicle; Or, New Weekly Entertainer. A Work Recording Authentic Accounts Of The Most Extraordinary Productions, Events, And Occurrences, In Providence, Nature, And Art (1793)
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