Cover Illustration, *Un Autre Monde*

The printed wrapper for the serialized edition puts the title where a planet should be. A great pockmarked globe hangs in a gray sky, and across its face runs the lettering, price, and publisher's address, as if the book were a world of its own. Beneath it, on a floor of long cast shadows, three creatures cut capers: each is a battledore racket sprouting spindly insect legs, the strings serving as a face. Nobody had to explain the object to a reader in 1844; the joke is simply that a thing has come alive and gone out to play. Grandville's whole method is here in miniature, an everyday item granted limbs and mischief. The empty stage and hard shadows give the little racket-men real presence, comedy staged like a scene.