The scarce first American edition, with the jellyfish design on the front board.
Publisher and Year: Boston: James R. Osgood Co., 1873 [but 1872]
Edition: First American edition, first printing, with the jellyfish design on the center of the front board (later changed to Nemo in the second edition), the “S” missing from “Sea” on the front board and title page (later added), and “The End” present on the final page of text (later removed). Bound in the publisher’s green cloth (also bound in other colors, with no known priority). Published in November 1872, but dated 1873 on the title page, as issued. The first American edition is much scarcer than the second edition published by Geo M. Smith the following year. The cause of this comparative scarcity is speculative, but a plausible hypothesis is that some copies of the first American edition were lost in the Great Boston Fire of 1872, which took place in the month of publication, and it is known that the publisher did lose significant portions of its stock of some titles in various locations throughout the city. (Edwards, 1996, pp. 33-34; Myers 56; Taves & Michaluk V006)
Condition and Description: Octavo; 8.5” x 5.5”; publisher’s pictorial green cloth elaborately stamped in gilt, black, and blind; edges plain; brown-coated endpapers; wood-engraved frontispiece with tissue guard; 109 additional wood-engraved illustrations throughout the text by Hildibrand after Edouard Riou and Alphonse de Neuville; 303 pp. A sharp and sturdy copy with repair to the binding and some expert restoration. Gilt with some rubbing but remaining fairly bright. Mild rubbing and soiling to the cloth. A couple of small stains to the edges of the text block. Recased; spine relined; 3.5” split to front joint sealed from underneath. Color touchups to the hinges and green cloth of the joints and extremities. Stamped design entirely original but for part of the bottom 0.25" of the spine foot. Modern bookplate to the front free endpaper, in an early twentieth-century style (discoloration and small tissue repairs underneath owing to an older plate removal, visible on the verso). Upper corner of the rear free endpaper neatly clipped. Previous owner’s inscription in pencil to the second blank leaf in a late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century hand (“Ella S. Ladd / from / Chester”). Pages largely clear, with occasional instances of mild foxing, smudging, and handling marks.
“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of this terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.”
Inventory ID: 747 - 450 - 086
The scarce first American edition, with the jellyfish design on the front board.
Publisher and Year: Boston: James R. Osgood Co., 1873 [but 1872]
Edition: First American edition, first printing, with the jellyfish design on the center of the front board (later changed to Nemo in the second edition), the “S” missing from “Sea” on the front board and title page (later added), and “The End” present on the final page of text (later removed). Bound in the publisher’s green cloth (also bound in other colors, with no known priority). Published in November 1872, but dated 1873 on the title page, as issued. The first American edition is much scarcer than the second edition published by Geo M. Smith the following year. The cause of this comparative scarcity is speculative, but a plausible hypothesis is that some copies of the first American edition were lost in the Great Boston Fire of 1872, which took place in the month of publication, and it is known that the publisher did lose significant portions of its stock of some titles in various locations throughout the city. (Edwards, 1996, pp. 33-34; Myers 56; Taves & Michaluk V006)
Condition and Description: Octavo; 8.5” x 5.5”; publisher’s pictorial green cloth elaborately stamped in gilt, black, and blind; edges plain; brown-coated endpapers; wood-engraved frontispiece with tissue guard; 109 additional wood-engraved illustrations throughout the text by Hildibrand after Edouard Riou and Alphonse de Neuville; 303 pp. A sharp and sturdy copy with repair to the binding and some expert restoration. Gilt with some rubbing but remaining fairly bright. Mild rubbing and soiling to the cloth. A couple of small stains to the edges of the text block. Recased; spine relined; 3.5” split to front joint sealed from underneath. Color touchups to the hinges and green cloth of the joints and extremities. Stamped design entirely original but for part of the bottom 0.25" of the spine foot. Modern bookplate to the front free endpaper, in an early twentieth-century style (discoloration and small tissue repairs underneath owing to an older plate removal, visible on the verso). Upper corner of the rear free endpaper neatly clipped. Previous owner’s inscription in pencil to the second blank leaf in a late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century hand (“Ella S. Ladd / from / Chester”). Pages largely clear, with occasional instances of mild foxing, smudging, and handling marks.
“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of this terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.”
Inventory ID: 747 - 450 - 086
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