by Jules Verne
First American edition, first printing
Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1873. Extremely scarce first American trade edition, previously published by Osgood via subscription only. viii, 303 pp., profusely illustrated with wood engravings. Bound in contemporary half morocco over marbled boards, raised bands and gilt lettering to spine, all edges speckled red, pink endpapers. Near Fine with moderate rubbing to covers, offsetting to endpapers, and owner signature in old hand to front free endpaper. Overopened with stitches showing at page v; binding else tight and square.
Jules Verne's masterpiece began with an admiring letter from his compatriot George Sand, who wrote: "I hope that you will soon conduct us through the depths of the sea, and that your personages will travel in a diving apparatus, which your science and imagination can perfect."
The diving apparatus Verne gave to his antihero Captain Nemo was the submarine Nautilus, which his imagination rendered perfectly: the sleek ship runs on electricity and more closely resembles modern submarines than those still in development in 1870, the year of the book's publication in France. It is one of many elements that inspired and delighted the book's 19th century audience, and is brought beautifully to life by Alphonse-Marie de Neuville and Edouard Riou, whose drawings were engraved on wood by Henri Theophile Hildibrand.
After its initial publication via subscription, Osgood issued this first trade edition at the end of 1872, though the title page bears the date of the following year. It is considerably more rare than the George M. Smith edition published immediately after, likely owing to a warehouse fire that destroyed unsold copies. A difficult-to-obtain milestone of science fiction. Taves & Michaluk V006.