A Journey to the Centre of the Earth
London: Griffith and Farran, 1872 [but actually 1871].
First British edition and first English translation of one of Jules Verne's most famous novels. viii, 384, [8] pp. with eight advertising pages at rear, illustrated with 52 wood engravings by Riou. Bound in publisher's cobalt blue cloth with pictorial stamping in black and gilt, peach endpapers. Very Good+ with heavily sunned and rubbed spine with restoration at head and tail, light soiling and several small ink stains to cloth. Light foxing to textblock edges and first and last few pages, several tiny inkstains to fore edge of textblock. Hinges repaired, small abrasion and bookseller blindstamp to front endsheet, ink inscriptions dated 1872 and 1930 to front free endpaper verso. Taves & Michaluk V002.
The first English-language edition of the science fiction classic. Professor Lidenbrock, infamously renamed "Hardwigg" by an anoymous translator who took great liberties with the text, discovers a runic manuscript that reveals a volcanic entrance into the earth's core. He grabs his nephew and an Icelander named Hans and carries them off into the bowels of the earth, where they discover a lost world of living dinosaurs before making the perilous journey back to the surface. The book was the delight of late Victorian boyhood — this copy was presented to its first owner "with his Mother's love" — and has never been out of print since.
Price: $25,000