Special Collections
Book of the Month, July 2009
Ausserordentliches Gespräch im Reiche der Todten
Frankfurt und Leipzig: [s.n.], 1735-1738
[B.L.] 1735 [Ausserordentliches]
Although for the English speaker imaginary conversations may particularly be connected with Walter Savage Landor’s Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (1824), the genre of conversations between established literary or historical characters, --sometimes contemporaries, sometimes living centuries apart -- commenced much earlier. David Fassmann (1683-1744) made them popular in Germany, where conversations published in the 1730s and 1740s include some between the Holy Roman Emperors Albert II and Charles VI (1741), the philosophers Leibnitz and Joannes Franciscus Buddeus, and between the Russian Empress Anne (1693-1740) and Pope Clement XII (1652-1740). The book featured here is of anonymous conversations between Biblical characters. Each conversation takes place between an Old Testament and a New Testament character: Cain and Judas; Cain’s son Abel and Stephen; Abel’s son Seth and Zechariah (father of John the Baptist); Seth’s son Enos and Simeon; Enos’s son Kenan and Nathanael (described as the honest Galilean from Cana). Earlier conversations, not in this volume, had been between Eve and Mary and between Adam and Joseph.
Conversations are anachronistic. For example, Zachariah quotes the Book of Acts and Stephen mentions Luther and Calvin, while Kenan goes so far as to cite the German jurist, statesman, politician Theodor Reinking (1590-1664). The illustration is from the conversation between Cain and Judas, in which the two men discuss suicide: Judas suggests that it is acceptable, while Cain is emphatic that it is not. Judas further narrates some details from a non-Biblical past: for example, that he stole some apples for Pilate, and that he killed his father, Ruben, by throwing a stone at him while he slept.
The conversations were published in parts between 1735 and 1737. They appear to be rare: no copy is recorded on COPAC, while WorldCat records isolated copies of only some of the conversations. The book is one of a small number of Continental antiquarian works which came to the Library with the collection of Lt. Col. Alfred Claude Bromhead, which focuses on the history of London. The Continental books were added to the Library’s online catalogue in 2009. Their difference from the collection as a whole suggests that they might have been acquired as part of job lots.
shl.specialcollections@london.ac.uk 
020 7862 8470
