1898 Rare Victorian Book - FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON by JULES VERNE
(Description)
Author : Jules Verne
Title : FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON.
Publisher : New York and Melbourne, Ward, Lock and Bowden, no date (circa 1898's)
Language : Text in English
Size : 7.5 " X 5 "
Pages : 208 pages + adds
Binding : Very good full Victorian decorated cloth binding (hinges fine, overall slightly worn and scuffed) under a protective removable mylar cover.
Content : Very good content (bright, tight and clean). Including a nice 'Awarded to book plate on first endpaper from South Preston School, dated Xmas 1898 by Henry C. Hanna, .
The book : Rare and attractive edition of Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen (French: Cinq semaines en ballon) , the famous adventure novel by Jules Verne, published in 1863. It is the first novel in which he perfected the "ingredients" of his later work, skillfully mixing a plot full of adventure and twists that hold the reader's interest with passages of technical, geographic, and historic description. The book gives readers a glimpse of the exploration of Africa, which was still not completely known to Europeans of the time, with explorers traveling all over the continent in search of its secrets.
Public interest in fanciful tales of African exploration was at its height, and the book was an instant hit; it made Verne financially independent and got him a contract with Jules Hetzel's publishing house, which put out several dozen more works of his for over forty years afterward.
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).