The Mysterious Island: Wrecked in the Air.

VERNE, Jules.

$475.00

Item Number: 128454

New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1875.

First American edition, first English language edition in book form, and first authorized edition of the first part of the crossover sequel to Verne’s famous Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and In Search of the Castaways. Slim octavo, original green cloth decorated in gilt, with forty-eight illustrations. Scribner Armstrong published this slim, double-column volume at the end of October 1874, both in wrappers (now exceedingly rare) and cloth, as here. The book was announced as about to be published on October 24th, it was copyrighted on the 26thm and two deposit copies were received on the 31st. Meanwhile, Henry L. Shepard of Boston was rushing to press an “authentic” edition (as opposed to an “authorized” one, which Scribner Armstrong’s was). On October 24th Shepard announced his was “ready,” and on the 31st announced that it was “ready” in wrappers but “nearly ready” in cloth. In short, precedence is a matter of a day or two, perhaps even hours. Incidentally, this was the only “Part” of The Mysterious Island that Scribner Armstrong published in this format; they quickly republished it in their usual (shorter and squatter) format, and then published the following two parts in that format. In near fine condition.

Often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction", French novelist Jules Verne had a wide influence on on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne's The Mysterious Island is a crossover sequel to Verne's famous Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and In Search of the Castaways, though its themes are vastly different from those books. An early draft of the novel, initially rejected by Verne's publisher and wholly reconceived before publication, was titled Shipwrecked Family: Marooned with Uncle Robinson, indicating the influence of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Johann David Wyss' Swiss Family Robinson on the thematic structure of the trilogy. In September of 1875, Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle published the first British edition of Mysterious Island in three volumes entitled Dropped from the Clouds, The Abandoned, and The Secret of the Island. The trilogy has been adapted numerous times for film, television, and radio broadcast.