The story of the Sun, New York, 1833-1918 / by Frank M. O'Brien.

RICHARD ADAMS LOCKE'S MOON HOAX 91
assured Poe that the mechanics of telescope construction were so fixed that it would be impossible to impart
verisimilitude to a tale based on a superefficient telescope. So Poe resorted to other means of bringing the
moon close to the reader's eye:
I fell back upon a style half plausible, half bantering,
and resolved to give what interest I could to an actual
passage from the earth to the moon, describing the
lunar scenery as if surveyed and personally examined by
the narrator.
Poe wrote the first part of " Hans Pfaall," and published it in the Southern Literary Messenger, of which
he was then editor, at Richmond, Virginia. Three weeks
afterward the first instalment of Locke's moon story
appeared in the Sun. At the moment Poe believed that
his idea had been kidnapped:
No sooner had I seen the paper than I understood the
jest, which not for a moment could I doubt had been
suggested by my own jeu d'esprit. Some of the New
York journals-the Transcript, among others-saw the
matter in the same light, and published the moon story
side by side with "Hans Pfaall," thinking that the
author of the one had been detected in the author of
the other.
Although the details are, with some exceptions, very
dissimilar, still I maintain that the general features of
the two compositions are nearly identical. Both are
hoaxes-although one is in a tone of mere banter, the
other of down-right earnest; both hoaxes are on one
subject, astronomy; both on the same point of that subject, the moon; both professed to have derived exclusive
information from a foreign country; and both attempt
to give plausibility by minuteness of scientific detail.
Add to all this, that nothing of a similar nature had
even been attempted before these two hoaxes, the one of
which followed immediately upon the heels of the other.
Having stated the case, however, in this form, I am