De la Terre à la Lune. Autour de la lune

First edition combining both titles.

From the Earth to the Moon — and its sequel, Round the Moon — is regarded today as one of the pioneering works of science fiction. It first appeared as a serial in Le Journal des débats, whose scientific section had been edited since 1845 by the physicist Léon Foucault (1819–1868), before being published in book form in 1865.

The illustrated first edition had appeared in 1868, in a plain green percaline binding. The story tells how, after the end of the American Civil War, an association of artillerymen and scientists connected to the military industry attempts to send a projectile carrying three men to the Moon.

“In addition to conducting thorough research himself, Verne enlisted the skills of a real mathematician, his cousin Henri Garcet, a teacher at the Lycée Henri IV, to calculate the parameters of the projectile’s journey to the Moon: the duration of the voyage (“a direct journey of 97 hours 20 minutes”), the launch time (97 hours 20 minutes before the Moon’s zenith passage) and the launch site (at 28° north latitude, in the United States, not far from the present-day Cape Canaveral base).” Despite its extraordinary subject, From the Earth to the Moon did not enjoy the same success as some of Jules Verne’s other novels — perhaps because the novel lacks a true conclusion, ending with the projectile’s departure and leaving the reader in suspense. This relative lack of success may in turn have delayed the publication of its sequel, Round the Moon (1869), as Pierre-Jules Hetzel preferred to bring Verne back to more earthbound stories: The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (1867), In Search of the Castaways (1868) and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869–1870) (Hugues Chabot & Cyril Langlois, De la terre à la lune de Jules Verne, Planet Terre, ENS, 2018).

A magnificent copy in its polychrome publisher’s boards. A rare title in this binding “with a single elephant in the title cartouche” and in this condition.