Cinq semaines en ballon. Voyage de découvertes en Afrique par trois Anglais

First illustrated edition with fifty-one engravings drawn by Édouard Riou and Henri de Montaut, and engraved by Hildibrand, Dumont, Fournier, Delaville, Pannemaker and Coste. "Bibliothèque d'éducation et de récréation" collection, a thirty-two page publisher's catalogue at the end of the volume.

Binding in brown half-shagreen, boards in red-brown percaline cloth, blind-stamped, spine with four raised bands, gilt compartments and fillets, gilt author and title, pastedowns of moiré-effect paper, gilt edges. Binding very slightly rubbed, a small tear to the vertical edge of the lower board, a few traces of mould to the pastedowns, some foxing to the leaves.

Dated ex-dono inscription on a front free endpaper at the beginning of the volume: "Marcel - De son Père. Janvier 1900".

The first of the sixty-two Voyages extraordinaires and the first novel by Jules Verne published by Hetzel, Cinq semaines en ballon [Five Weeks in a Balloon] recounts the exploration of the African continent, then still imperfectly known to Europeans.

After rejecting the manuscript of Voyage en Angleterre et en Écosse [Journey to England and Scotland], Pierre-Jules Hetzel asked Jules Verne to submit not a mere narrative, but a full-fledged travel novel. The work the writer presented to him shortly afterward met with great enthusiasm: dynamic and already marked by themes characteristic of the author, it hinted at the elements of the novel of anticipation that would later establish his renown.

First illustrated edition of this adventure novel, which marks the beginning of Jules Verne's career in the anticipation novel.