Jules Verne - Autour de la Lune [Cartonnage dit « aux bouquets de roses »] - 1872-1875

VERNE (Jules) - Around the Moon - Paris, J. Hetzel et Cie, Bibliothèque d'Éducation et de Récréation, 18, rue Jacob, [s.d., circa 1872-1875]. First printing in 8vo illustrated in the editor's early pebbled binding.

Grand In-8 (approx. 27 x 18 cm). Half-title, title page adorned with the round monogram representing a lunar eclipse, 44 wood engravings hors-texte and in-text by Émile Bayard and A. De Neuville, engraved by Hildibrand.

Publisher's red percaline binding called “à bouquets de roses.” Gilded edges.
Magnificent copy. The publisher's binding preserves a vivid percaline and gilding that is exceptionally bright and neat on the first cover and spine. Heads and corners with wear from use and small losses at the extremities. Small nicks on the hinges. Spine slightly split.

The interior is fresh; the sorte paper of the period shows rare light marginal foxing, the gathering is perfectly solid.
Historical and literary context

Published in 1870 after From the Earth to the Moon, Around the Moon recounts the orbital voyage of the three famous improvised space travelers (Barbicane, Nicholl and Michel Ardan) aboard their projectile shell launched from Florida by the gigantic Columbiad cannon.

This novel is a cornerstone of modern science fiction. Jules Verne anticipates with astonishing scientific precision the principles of weightlessness, celestial mechanics, the choice of the return trajectory, and the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, prefiguring by more than a century NASA’s Apollo program.

The magnificent engravings by Hildibrand after Émile Bayard and Alphonse de Neuville played a crucial role in the visual representation of space in the Victorian era. It is precisely in this work that the visual depiction, in engraving, of astronauts floating in a state of weightlessness inside their cabin appears for the first time.