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1880 Rare French Book - JULES VERNE - From the Earth to the Moon - De la Terre à la Lune, trajet direct en 97 heures 20 minutes. Illustrated.

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Original price $270 USD - Original price $270 USD
Original price
$270 USD
$270 USD - $270 USD
Current price $270 USD

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(Description)



Author: Jules Verne. 
Title: De la Terre à la Lune, trajet direct en 97 heures 20 minutes. 41 dessins et une carte par De Montaut.
Publisher : Paris, Bibliotheque d'Education et de Récréation J. HETZEL et Cie. no date (circa 1880).
Language: Text in French.
Size: 11 " X 7.5 ".
Pages: 169 pages.
Binding: Attractive and very good original full red & gilt cloth binding (hinges slightly scuffed and worn but still tight, overall slightly worn and scuffed - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover. This is the Hetzel binding known as "Cartonnage Type Aux Initiales", which places this copy between 1875 and 1890. 
Content: Very good to good content (bright and tight, usual foxing - as shown, school prize label dated 1881-1882 on the first endpaper - as shown).
Illustrations: Complete with the 41 drawings and the map by Henri De Montaut.


The book: Rare and attractive early French Hetzel edition of From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minutes (French: De la Terre à la Lune, trajet direct en 97 heures 20 minutes) -- an 1865 novel by Jules Verne. It tells the story of the Baltimore Gun Club, a post-American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, and their attempts to build an enormous Columbiad space gun and launch three people—the Gun Club's president, his Philadelphian armor-making rival, and a French poet—in a projectile with the goal of a Moon landing. Five years later, Verne wrote a sequel called Around the Moon.

The story is also notable in that Verne attempted to do some rough calculations as to the requirements for the cannon and in that, considering the comparative lack of empirical data on the subject at the time, some of his figures are remarkably accurate. However, his scenario turned out to be impractical for safe human space travel since a much longer barrel would have been required to reach escape velocity while limiting acceleration to survivable limits for the passengers.

The author: Jules Gabriel Verne (8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. Verne was born to bourgeois parents in the seaport of Nantes, where he was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to write for magazines and the stage. 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).

The illustrator: Henri de Montaut (1825 or 1830 – 1890 or 1900) was a French draftsman, engraver, and illustrator of the 19th century. He sometimes signed Henri de Hem, Monta or Hy.