Percy Greg
English writer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Percy Greg (7 January 1836 Bury – 24 December 1889, Chelsea), son of William Rathbone Greg, was an English writer.[1]
His Across the Zodiac (1880) is an early science fiction novel, said to be the progenitor of the sword-and-planet genre. For that novel, Greg created what may have been the first artistic language that was described with linguistic and grammatical terminology.[2] It also contains what is believed to be the first instance in the English language of the word "astronaut".[3]
In 2010, a crater on Mars was named Greg[4] in recognition of his contribution to the lore of Mars.[5]
Percy Greg used the pseudonym 'Lionel H. Holdreth' when writing for George Jacob Holyoake's freethinking periodical, The Reasoner, in the 1850s, and he edited the paper for a while in 1859 when Holyoake was ill.[6]
Bibliography
- Across the Zodiac (1880)
- History of the United States to the Reconstruction of the Union (1887)
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