VARIOUS - Isaac Asimov Presents the Best Science Fiction of the 19th Century

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1983. 1st. Hardcover. 14x22cm. READING COPY. ".Asimov points out in his Introduction "True science fiction could not have been written prior to the nineteenth century, because it was only with the coming of the Industrial Revolution that the rate of technological change became great enough to notice in a lifetime." Contents - THE FIRST CENTURY OF SCIENCE FICTION by Isaac Asimov, THE SANDMAN (1817) by E. T. A. Hoffmann (translated from the German by J. T. Bealby), THE MORTAL IMMORTAL (1834) by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM (1841) by Edgar Allan Poe, RAPPACCINI'S DAUGHTER (1844) by Nathaniel Hawthorne, THE CLOCK THAT WENT BACKWARD (1881) by Edward Page Mitchell, INTO THE SUN (1882) by Robert Duncan Milne, A TALE OF NEGATIVE GRAVITY (1884) by Frank R. Stockton, THE HORLA (1887) by Guy de Maupassant, THE SHAPES (1887) by J.-H. Rosny aine (translated from the French by Damon Knight). Ex library, stamps and remains of effects to inside front cover and half title page, front free endpaper torn out and lost; blemishing within fairly frequent but not significant; red boards, heavily rubbed at base edges, creased spine, grubby page block. Jacket is complete and bright with a 15mm tear at top front fore edge corner, but is far from fresh, being lightly creased all over - the printed side is glossy while the reverse is matt, so it may be that it was laminated, poorly, by the library.. Fair to Good .