Tag Archive: 0ballooning

As I have written before, the 1780s saw a craze for all things ballooning.  Above is a coloured engraving of an ascent made by the famous French balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard in Nuremberg on 12 November 1787.  As one can imagine, such ascents were exceedingly popular with the public, but there was also an element of danger involved.  A broadside […]

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a fictitious Boston imprint from 1777.  Here’s something in the same vein, or so I first thought: a German novel from c.1789, written by Johann Wolfgang Andreas Schöpfel (1752–1827).  Inspired by the craze for balloon travel that hit Europe and America in the 1780s, it opens with a balloon flight from Versailles which ends […]