The Mysterious Island: Dropped From the Clouds.

VERNE, Jules.

The Mysterious Island: Dropped From the Clouds.

London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Low, & Searle , 1875.

$12,900.00

In Stock Item Number: RRB-125618

Custom Clamshell Box

Hand made by the Harcourt Bindery. ~90 days

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First English Edition of Jules Verne's The Mysterious Island: Dropped From the Clouds; With an Autograph Note Signed by Him

First edition in English in book form of the first volume of Verne's Mysterious Island trilogy, preceding the Scribner Armstrong's first American edition. Octavo, original publisher's cloth decorated in gilt, all edges gilt, illustrated, tissue-guarded frontispiece. Accompanied by an autograph note signed by Verne and dated the year he published "Two Years' Vacation" his South Pacific adventure novel. Card stock, written in French, and dated March 1888. The note reads in full in English, "Very willingly, Monsieur, will I address the lines which your sympathetic letter demands, praying that you excuse me if I haven't responded to you earlier. Your well devoted Jules Verne March 88." Verne may have been a little preoccupied in 1888. In that year, he entered French politics by becoming town councilor of Amiens in northern-central France and his latest adventure novel was also published. In fine condition with scrapbook album mounting traces to the verso. The piece measures 5 inches by 2.625 inches. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Armorial bookplates to the pastedown and front free endpaper. Translated from the French by W.H.G. Kingston. An exceptional example, scarce in this condition. A superior example.

Often referred to as the "Father of Science Fiction", French novelist Jules Verne had a wide influence 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.