The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
"Petherick has significantly linked More's Utopia with that early anticipation of science fiction, Bacon's New Atlantis, and with a decidedly upside-down utopia by Joseph Hall, Mundus Alter et Idem. (The Latin title implies an imaginary and exotic world that appears very different, yet remains in certain fundamental ways the same as European societies.) Since Hall's anti-utopia is firmly set in 'Terra Australis incognita', and since most copies of the work carry an elaborate apparatus of five engraved maps of a highly imaginary version of the Southern Continent, Mundus Alter et Idem continues to be ranked among the more desirable rariora within the larger field of Australiana. These Australian associations, together with the obvious anticipation of Gulliver's Travels, must be allowed as the principal reasons for the presence of so many copies of Mundus Alter et Idem in libraries and in private collections throughout Australia...In Gabriel de Foigny's La Terre Australe Connue the word "Australiens" is first used as describing the inhabitants of this southern continent. " (p.45, 47)
