Verne, Jules | Two first American editions of his classics

Verne, Jules

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. Boston: James R. Osgood & Company, 1873 [but 1872]

8vo (202 x 134 mm). Half-title, frontispiece, 109 full-page engraved plates throughout, including two maps, "The End" in unbroken type on p. 303; lightly toned, a few stray spots and stains, a few margins chipped. Rebound in full blue leather with replica of original pictorial design tooled in gold and black, including central jellyfish vignette on the upper cover; gilt vignette rubbed.

[with:]

Around the World in Eighty Days. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1873

8vo (188 x 130 mm). Title dated 1873, 54 engraved plates by A. de Neuville and L. Bennet, including frontispiece with tissue guard, plus one additional in-text illustration and Verne's full-page sketch of the "Saint Michael"; title and frontispiece foxed, short open tear to margin of page 7, adhesive between page 70 and the illustration affecting two letters, scattered foxing, instances of marginal finger soiling and dampstaining. Rebound in full green leather with replica of original pictorial design tooled in gold and black; gilt rubbed slightly.

Two Verne classics—the elusive first American edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and the first American illustrated edition of Around the World in Eighty Days.

The Osgood edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues is exceedingly rare. This true first American edition published in late 1872 was likely bound from the same sheets as the first English edition, which appeared a few weeks earlier. It is believed that most of the copies of this rare Osgood edition perished in the Great Boston Fire in November 1872. A more common later edition issued by George M. Smith & Co. revised several errors in the contents and binding design.

The octavo edition of Around the World in Eighty Days is the first illustrated American edition, first state of Verne's travel classic, bound from the sheets of the first illustrated English edition. A different 16mo edition of the work titled The Tour of the World in Eighty Days was also issued in 1873 without illustrations, though Myers notes that the present copy is "possibly preceding the 16mo edition although Osgood may have intended two printings, one smaller and cheaper with a different title to promote greater sales" (Myers 54).

REFERENCES

Myers 56; Myers 54

PROVENANCE

Twenty Thousand Leagues: Early inscription, "Boylston from Aunt Annie, Xmas 1884," to recto of frontispiece leaf; Around the World: Preliminary leaf dated 1876