Synopsis
Hardcover 5 3/4" X 8 1/2" 220 pages. B/W illustrations.
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Review
On a cold morning just a few days into the year 1800, the citizens of the southern French village of Saint-Sernin awoke to a strange vision: a hairy boy, naked, who appeared as if by some witchcraft from the nearby woods. Captured while digging up vegetables from a tanner's garden, the boy did not--could not--speak. Instead, he emitted a few weird cries, trying to hide himself from his puzzled captors.
The next day, the gendarmes took the boy to a hospice in a nearby town. From there, writes the historian and literary scholar Roger Shattuck, his path took this "prisoner without a crime," now called Victor, into the studies and laboratories of revolutionary France, where the boy presented a rare homegrown instance of Rousseau's "noble savage" to the civilized world. Much scholarly and scientific debate surrounded him. Finally, Victor, now famed as the "wild boy of Aveyron," came under the care of a sympathetic young doctor who concluded that Victor was in fact an abandoned deaf-mute, intelligent but forlorn, who had somehow been able to survive on his own. Dismissed in a contemporary encyclopedia as "half wild" and "incapable of learning to speak in spite of all efforts to teach him," Victor was eventually forgotten. "A state pension kept him alive, like an animal in a zoo," writes Shattuck, "and when he died no one noticed." Scientific debate about his condition was renewed from time to time, however, and the story of the wild boy was influential in the development of several theories of language learning and human evolution. Shattuck's slender narrative is a fine work of scholarly detection, yielding an instructive episode in the history of science. --Gregory McNamee
About the Author
Roger Shattuck won the National Book Award in 1975 for his acclaimed biography, MARCEL PROUST. He is also the author of THE BANQUET YEARS. He lives in Boston.
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The Forbidden Experiment : The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron
Published by
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York, 1980
ISBN 10: 0374157553
ISBN 13: 9780374157555
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: About Books, Henderson, NV, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good condition. Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket. First printing, 1980 (so stated). New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980. Covers sunned else a clean, square, tight copy. No remainder marks. No owner's name or bookplate. Inner hinges are perfect. Pages are fresh and crisp. No underlining. No highlighting. No margin notes. Bound in the original black cloth. Illustrated with old prints, portraits and a manuscript facsimile. Chronology. Bibliography of Sources/Further Reading List. Illustration of the Institute for Deaf-Mutes, Paris, circa 1846, on the endpapers. Scarce hardcover first edition. From the publisher: "Before dawn on January 8, 1800, a remarkable creature came out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in southern France. He was animal in behavior, human in form, speechless.". First printing, 1980 (so stated). Hard Cover. Very Good condition./No Dust Jacket. 8vo. 220pp;. Seller Inventory # 004231
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The forbidden experiment: The story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron
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Paperback. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # L1-301ri
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The Forbidden Experiment: the Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron
Published by
Farrar, Straus And Giroux, New York, 1980
ISBN 10: 0374157553
ISBN 13: 9780374157555
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: KULTURAs books, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.
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Hardcover. Condition: Very Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good+. First Edition; Stated First Printing. Hardcover with dustjacket. First edition. Gray cloth boards, pristine. Glossy photograph of author and review slip laid in. Protected, price unclipped, dustjacket is bright and sharp, mild shelf wear to edges. Book is firm in binding, unread, illustrated endpapers. Free of any markings, not ex-library. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 220 pages. Seller Inventory # 11388
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The Forbidden Experiment
Published by
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980
ISBN 10: 0374157553
ISBN 13: 9780374157555
Used
Softcover
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Condition: Good. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # 9432459-75