Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras First Edition - Jules Verne - Bauman Rare Books

Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras

Jules VERNE

Item#: 90415 We're sorry, this item has been sold

Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras

JULES VERNE’S THE VOYAGES AND ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HATTERAS, 1875, IN LOVELY PICTORIAL PUBLISHER’S CLOTH

VERNE, Jules. The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1875. Octavo, original black- and gilt-stamped pictorial blue cloth.

First American edition and first one-volume edition in English of the complete Captain Hatteras adventures, with 250 illustrations by Riou, in wonderful pictorial publisher’s cloth.

This novel tells the story of fictional British explorer Captain Hatteras’ expedition to the North Pole. After facing a mutiny, Hatteras and his small remaining crew finally discover a small island, New America, and spend the winter there with the help of the expedition’s resident inventor, Doctor Clawbonny. At the end of winter, Hatteras and his crew build a boat from an old shipwreck and continue toward the pole, stopping only upon discovering a volcano. The pole turns out to be in the center of the volcano. Hatteras jumps in. Though he survives, he is driven mad by the experience and spends the rest of his life in a British insane asylum. Adventure stories “constitute by far the largest quantity of Verne’s literary output… The Voyages Extraordinaires [as Verne’s novels are collectively known] had a dual aim—to teach science and geography through fictional travels and adventures” (Taves & Margot, Science Fiction Studies 24:3). The first edition was published in French in 1866. This work is composed of two shorter pieces: The English at the North Pole and The Field of Ice, both originally published in London by Routledge in 1874. However, this one-volume Philadelphia edition precedes Routledges’s one-volume edition by several months and is thus the first one-volume edition in English as well as the first American edition. This edition was also published in green and salmon cloth; priority unknown. Taves & Michaluk V004. Morocco bookplate.

A few faint stains to interior, front inner paper hinge split, original cloth quite nice. A handsome copy in near-fine condition.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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