Atheistic utopian novel by Simon Tyssot de Patot, banned upon publication

A rare second edition—likely a French pirate edition—of Simon Tyssot de Patot’s radical utopian novel, Voyages et Aventures de Jacques Massé.

Originally published in 1714, this atheistic utopian novel "surpassed practically every other work of philosophical fiction of the age for notoriety", as historian Jonathan Israel notes.

After a shipwreck, the protagonist Jacques Massé finds himself alone on a remote shore. Following a series of hardships, he arrives in an ideal society, where reason and harmony reign. The locals welcome him warmly, but when Jacques introduces basic ideas of Christianity, the people laugh: hey find them naive and irrational.

After spending five years in this rational utopia, Jacques departs for Europe. On his journey home, he meets a young Gascon “qui était bien le plus hardi Athée ou Déiste, que j'aye vû de mes yeux.” The Gascon, a fearless atheist or deist, openly rejects formal religion and views the Bible as just another book, views not unlike those expressed by Adriaan Koerbagh in his Bloemhof (1668).

The novel concludes with a philosophical fable—the fable of the bees—in which the Gascon ridicules Christianity through allegory.

Like other utopian novels "Jacques Massé seeks to persuade readers of the irrationality of European religion, politics, morality, and society by describing in detail an exotic and remote atheistic society, where peace and harmony reign, and virtue is better cultivated than among Europeans" (Israel). Unsurprisingly, the book was banned in both France and the Dutch Republic upon publication.

This edition is  rare and of significance to collections focused on Enlightenment thought, utopian literature, radical atheism, or banned books.