"Letters from the Planets"

1887 [Lach-Szyrma, Wladjslaw Somerville] (1841-1915). “Letters from the Planets.” By Our Roving Correspondent [pseud.]. Signed Alerial [pseud.]. Cassell’s Family Magazine 13 (January, April, August, October 1887): 121-23, 311-13, 556-58, 668-69. The stories from April and October are rpt. as “Letters from Mars.” in Lost Mars: The Golden Age of the Red Planet. Ed. Mike [Michael Raymond Donald] Ashley (London: British Library, 2018), 53-72 with an editor’s not on 51-52. The U. S. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018 has the subtitle: Stories from the Golden Age of the Red Planet. Series continued as “The Portals of the King of Day. A Journey To the Regions of the Sun.” 14 (January 1888): 96-98; “Our Second Voyage to Mars.” 15 (February 1889): 166-70; “Letters from the Planets--Canal Life on Mars.” 16 (February 1890): 285-87; “A Trip to Jupiter’s Moonlet.” 18 (December 1891): 55-56; and “Corresponding With the Planets.” 19 (June 1893): 403-05. Entire series rpt. in Worlds Apart: An Anthology in Facsimile [Cover subtitle An Anthology of Interplanetary Fiction]. Ed. George Locke (London: Cornmarket Reprints, 1972), 1-26. L, PSt

The October 1887 story depicts Venus as an Athenian democracy. See also 1874 and 1883 Lach-Szyrma. The author was an Anglican clergyman.