Dear Urania

In 1857 the Neapolitan astronomer Ernesto Capocci di Belmonte (1798–1864) published the novella Report of the first Voyage to the Moon made by a woman in the year of grace 2057. The tale takes the form of a letter from the Moon written by Capocci’s protagonist Urania to her friend Ernestina on Earth — a conceit allowing the writer to give free rein to his more fanciful scientific speculations under the cover of fiction. In Dear Urania Burgin imagines Ernestina’s reply.