Publisher and Year: Boston: Geo M. Smith & Co., 1873
Edition: First printing of the Geo M. Smith edition, second issue as usual (lacking “The End” on p. 303). First published in France in 1870 as Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers, the novel was first issued in the United States in late 1872 by James R. Osgood. Only an estimated 50 to 100 copies of the Osgood edition are thought to have survived the Great Boston Fire of 1872. This edition was printed from the same plates and uses the same binding design, but with the central jellyfish motif replaced by Captain Nemo holding a sextant and with "Sea" corrected to "Seas."
Condition and Description: Octavo, publisher’s green cloth elaborately stamped in gilt and black, brown coated endpapers, frontispiece with tissue guard, 110 illustrations, 303 pp. Boards and edges with some rubbing; gilt bright with minimal loss. Hinges cracking at the endpapers, as common, but nevertheless remain sturdy (see final four images). Interior binding solid, though very occasionally over-opened (example shown); no loose pages. Front and rear flyleaves browned. Occasional spotting and thumbing. Very faint dampstain to the bottom edge of the text block, with minor intrusion into the lower margins throughout, as shown. Crease to top-right corner of pp. 289–291. Offsetting between pages. A well-preserved example of Verne’s pioneering work of science fiction.
“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.”
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas is Jules Verne’s meticulously researched vision of global undersea travel aboard the electrically powered submarine, the Nautilus. Its unprecedented fusion of real marine science with plausible technological extrapolation arrived when the public was gripped by advances in engineering, polar exploration, and the first serious naval experiments with submersibles. The novel sold briskly in France and was swiftly translated across Europe and the United States. Readers were drawn not only to its spectacle, including giant squid battles and polar voyages, but to its authority. Verne’s integration of accurate oceanography, zoology, and engineering gave the fiction the force of prophecy. The novel would inspire American inventors Simon Lake and John Philip Holland, who credited the Nautilus as a formative influence on their submarine designs. Few novels can claim such immediate commercial success, technical plausibility, and enduring cultural imprint.
Inventory ID: 881 - 248 - 327
Publisher and Year: Boston: Geo M. Smith & Co., 1873
Edition: First printing of the Geo M. Smith edition, second issue as usual (lacking “The End” on p. 303). First published in France in 1870 as Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers, the novel was first issued in the United States in late 1872 by James R. Osgood. Only an estimated 50 to 100 copies of the Osgood edition are thought to have survived the Great Boston Fire of 1872. This edition was printed from the same plates and uses the same binding design, but with the central jellyfish motif replaced by Captain Nemo holding a sextant and with "Sea" corrected to "Seas."
Condition and Description: Octavo, publisher’s green cloth elaborately stamped in gilt and black, brown coated endpapers, frontispiece with tissue guard, 110 illustrations, 303 pp. Boards and edges with some rubbing; gilt bright with minimal loss. Hinges cracking at the endpapers, as common, but nevertheless remain sturdy (see final four images). Interior binding solid, though very occasionally over-opened (example shown); no loose pages. Front and rear flyleaves browned. Occasional spotting and thumbing. Very faint dampstain to the bottom edge of the text block, with minor intrusion into the lower margins throughout, as shown. Crease to top-right corner of pp. 289–291. Offsetting between pages. A well-preserved example of Verne’s pioneering work of science fiction.
“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.”
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas is Jules Verne’s meticulously researched vision of global undersea travel aboard the electrically powered submarine, the Nautilus. Its unprecedented fusion of real marine science with plausible technological extrapolation arrived when the public was gripped by advances in engineering, polar exploration, and the first serious naval experiments with submersibles. The novel sold briskly in France and was swiftly translated across Europe and the United States. Readers were drawn not only to its spectacle, including giant squid battles and polar voyages, but to its authority. Verne’s integration of accurate oceanography, zoology, and engineering gave the fiction the force of prophecy. The novel would inspire American inventors Simon Lake and John Philip Holland, who credited the Nautilus as a formative influence on their submarine designs. Few novels can claim such immediate commercial success, technical plausibility, and enduring cultural imprint.
Inventory ID: 881 - 248 - 327
Image 1 of 24
Image 2 of 24
Image 3 of 24
Image 4 of 24
Image 5 of 24
Image 6 of 24
Image 7 of 24
Image 8 of 24
Image 9 of 24
Image 10 of 24
Image 11 of 24
Image 12 of 24
Image 13 of 24
Image 14 of 24
Image 15 of 24
Image 16 of 24
Image 17 of 24
Image 18 of 24
Image 19 of 24
Image 20 of 24
Image 21 of 24
Image 22 of 24
Image 23 of 24
Image 24 of 24