Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1873 [but actually 1872].
Extremely scarce first American trade edition, previously published by Osgood via subscription only, published in late 1872 with the title page dated to the coming year. viii, 303 pp., printed on speckled wove paper and profusely illustrated with wood engravings. Bound in publisher's emerald green cloth with blindstamped rear board and pictorial stamping in black and gilt to spine and front board, brown coated endpapers. Final "s" left off the title on front board, but in place on title page.
Near Fine with light wear and biopredation to cloth, and light spotting to upper and fore textblock edges. Binding shaken, overopened in places throughout, pencil mark to back pastedown. Contemporary gift inscription to front free endpaper.
Jules Verne's masterpiece began with an admiring letter from his compatriot George Sand, who wrote: "I hope that you will soon conduct us through the depths of the sea, and that your personages will travel in a diving apparatus, which your science and imagination can perfect."
The diving apparatus that Verne gave to his anguished antihero Captain Nemo was the submarine Nautilus, which runs on electricity and more closely resembles modern submarines than those still in development in the 1870s. The luxurious vessel is a character in its own right, one of many elements that inspired and delighted the book's 19th century audience. One American newspaper reviewer declared that the novel was "more fascinating than the Voyage of Ulysses, more mature and satisfactory than the story of Sinbad," while another announced that it was "the wonder book of the nineteenth century."
Verne himself thought Twenty Thousand Leagues the best of his novels. He read scientific articles, drew on childhood experiences, and interrogated sailors in preparation for the writing. "I've never held a better thing in my hand," he wrote happily to his French publisher — who didn't like the manuscript. Verne was forced to submit to changes that made the novel less political and purposeful, though it was still gripping enough to become a global bestseller.
The first American edition is nonetheless extremely rare, considerably more so than the George M. Smith edition published immediately after. There may be as few as fifty copies extant of this lavishly bound and beautifully illustrated edition. The likely culprit is the Great Boston Fire of 1872, which destroyed the Osgood warehouse before most of the books had a chance to make it onto bookstore shelves. A difficult-to-obtain milestone of science fiction. Taves & Michaluk V006.
Price: $85,000