Verne, Jules

Estimate

10,000 - 15,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. Boston James R. Osgood and Company, 1873 -[72]
paper, ink, leather

8vo (8 x 5 1/2 in.; 202 x 137 mm.). viii, 303 pp., with frontispiece with tissue-guard, illustrated with steel engraved plates throughout; marginal foxing. Original green cloth decorated in gilt and black, with the jellyfish motif in gilt in the central medallion, coated brown endpapers; hinges, top and bottom of spine slightly rubbed.

Provenance

Isaac H. Cage (bookplate dated January 1873, in Fisherville, N. H. Price 225 n° 432.)

Literature

Taves & Michaluk V006; Myers, 56.

Catalogue Note

First American edition, first issue.

This edition is a genuine Verne rarity. It varies from the more common George M. Smith subscription issue in the following regards: jellyfish vignette on the cover; the final "s" in "Seas" lacking from the title on the cover and spine; "THE END" in unbroken type following the final paragraph; identical collation as in the Sampson Low first English edition.

Few copies of this, the true first American edition, are known to exist, the consensus being that most were destroyed in the Great Boston Fire, which occurred in the same month as publication.