Vingt mille lieues sous les mers

Later illustrated edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, with 111 drawings by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou, engraved by Hildibrand. It includes four hors-texte chromolithographic plates, two of which retain only traces of polychromy; copies with six fully coloured plates are later. Title-page issued by the Collection Hetzel, 18 rue Jacob, bearing the statement “Ouvrage couronné par l’Académie française”.

Publisher’s polychrome cloth binding in the “one elephant, title in the fan” design, signed Engel at the foot of the upper cover; lighthouse spine signed M. Engel at foot, lower cover type “i” according to Jauzac, blue endleaves, gilt edges. Very fine upper cover, despite a rubbed area affecting two letters of the word “Voyages” and another on the vignette to the right of the elephant; lower cover virtually flawless, the cloth bright and clean. Spine vivid and sharp, with the gilt well preserved; headcaps slightly collapsed. Corners pointed, one lower corner very slightly turned in. An exceptionally fresh copy, entirely free from foxing.

A letter from George Sand dated 25 July 1865 remarkably anticipates the project Verne would later develop in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. After reading Five Weeks in a Balloon and Journey to the Centre of the Earth, she wrote to him: “J’espère que vous nous conduirez bientôt dans les profondeurs de la mer et que vous ferez voyager vos personnages dans ces appareils de plongeurs que votre science et votre imagination peuvent se permettre de perfectionner.” Verne then spent several years developing what he first called his Voyage sous les eaux.

Nemo was not yet, in Verne’s earliest plans, the mysterious figure of the finished novel. The author initially wanted to make him a Pole in revolt against Russian oppression; Hetzel objected, much to Verne’s regret, and in 1867 he wrote to him: “je regrette mon Polonais”. Stripped of this explicit political identity, Nemo became the deliberately enigmatic figure of the novel, withdrawn from the nations of the world aboard the Nautilus.

Between 1869 and 1871, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas moved from serial publication to the two separately issued volumes and then to the large illustrated edition. The following year, the Académie française awarded the novel, together with four other works by Verne, a Montyon Prize; the statement printed on the title-page of this later issue still preserves the memory of that distinction.

Around 1905, more than thirty years after its first large illustrated edition, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas was given yet another spectacular Hetzel binding, engraved and executed by Engel. The novel thus remained among the major titles that the firm continued to re-dress during its final years.

More than thirty years after its first large illustrated edition, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas was still receiving a new decorative treatment from Hetzel. In this particularly fresh copy, the elephant binding gives the novel one last great presentation before the end of the Hetzel firm