When Bernard de Fontenelle published the first edition of his Entretiens sur la Pluralite des Mondes in 1686, it was an immediate success. In an age when women, even those from the richest and most distinguished families, received little or no formal education, it offered an entertaining and accessible introduction to astronomy and some of the burning topics of the day. Does the earth really go around the sun? Are there other inhabited planets out there? If so, are the inhabitants like us or quite different? Is the moon itself inhabited? Is even the sun inhabited? Are there volcanoes on the moon? How hot is mercury? How long is a Venusian day? Will flying machines one day take us to the moon? Providing new notes, some illustrations and an introduction, this new Tiger of the Stripe edition is based on the 1808 edition of Elizabeth Gunning's translation, retaining the charm which was so essential for the book's success. Miss Gunning, a beautiful and talented novelist with a rather racy personal life, drew on an annotated French edition by the distinguished French astronomer, Jerome de Lalande. This edition thus offers an interesting accretion of ideas, ranging from Fontenelle's 1686 edition and later revisions, Lalande's (sometimes rather critical) comments, Gunning's appropriately flowery translation, and our own explanations for the modern reader. It is, without doubt, a little gem.

Surveying the night sky, a charming philosopher and his hostess, the Marquise, are considering thep ossibility of travelers from the moon. "What if they were skillful enough to navigate on the outer surface of our air, and from there, through their curiosity to see us, they angled for us like fish? Would that please you?" asks the philosopher. "Why not?" the Marquise replies. "As for me, I'd put myself into their nets of my own volition just to have the pleasure of seeing those who caught me."
In this imaginary conversation of three hundred years ago, readers can share the excitement of a new, extremely daring view of the uinverse. "Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes)," first published in 1686, is one of the best loved classics of the early French enlightenment. Through a series of informal dialogues that take place on successive evenings in the marquise's moonlit gardens, Fontenelle describes the new cosmology of the Copernican world view with matchles clarity, imagination, and wit. Moreover, he boldly makes his interlocutor a woman, inviting female participation in the almost exclusively male province of scientific discourse.
The popular Fontenelle lived through an entire century, from 1657 to 1757, and wrote prolifically. H. A. Hargreaves's fresh, appealing translation brings the author's masterpiece to new generations of readers, while the introduction by Nina Rattner Gelbart clearly demonstrates the importance of the "Conversations" for the history of science, of women, of literature, and of French civilization, and for the popularization of culture.