Verneiana

Jules Verne was one of the nineteenth-century's most popular and bestselling authors. Pierre-Jules Hetzel, Verne's publisher and collaborator, put out his books in various formats. First the stories were serialised in Hetzel's own biweekly Magasin d'Éducation et de récréation (‘Magazine of Education and Recreation’), with accompanying illustrations by the staff artists of Hetzel's company: Édouard Riou (1833-1900), Henri de Montaut (1825-1890), Léon Benett (1839-1916) and Alphonse de Neuville (1835–1885). After this Hetzel, issued one-volume editions in small-format octodecimo (that is: 4 x 6.5 inches) in plain binding and without illustrations. Finally he put out the much more expensive deluxe ‘Cartonnages Dorés et Colorés’ (‘gilded and coloured bindings’) editions. These had ornate gilded covers, included all interior illustrations, and were issued in large format octavo (6 x 9 inches). They were usually published in December for the Christmas and New Year markets. Despite their high price, they sold well, and not just in France. In Russia at this time the wealthier classes tended to speak French (the proles spoke Russian) and Verne sold in huge quantities there. Famously, Hetzel persuaded Verne to change the identity of Captain Nemo, in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869-71) to avoid offending the readers of this Russian market (Nemo was originally a Polish aristocrat, taking revenge upon Russian ships for the Russian suppression of Polish uprisings in 1831 and 1846: following Hetzel's intervention he was recast as an Indian nobleman, taking revenge upon the British for their imperial occupation of India). 

The deluxe editions were mostly bound in red, and mostly followed the same design, with small variations. They were generic Voyages Extraordinaires covers, rather than covers tailored to the specific titles. Some had one elephant’s head in the top left hand corner, and others had two pachyderms, top left and right: known among collectors today as one-elephant and two-elephant editions.

In amongst the fernlike swirls and patterns, design embellishments, were three or sometimes four inset rectangular panels, showing scenes from (top to bottom) Les Enfants du capitaine Grant (‘Captain Grant’s Children’ 1867–68), Cinq semaines en ballon (‘Five Weeks in a Balloon’, 1863), Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras au pole nord (‘The Travels and Adventures of Captain Hatteras at the north pole’, 1866) and, at the bottom, Voyage au centre de la Terre (‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, 1864). These were all early bestsellers, and though Verne published continuously up until his death in 1905, they remained on the Voyages Extraordinaires covers.

The livery was usually red; but on occasion a different colour was preferred, as with this edition of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869-70) in gorgeous, and fitting, marine blue:

Interior illustrations and frontispieces were not coloured. This splendid frontispiece for the whole collection, by Édouard Riou, adds De la Terre à la Lune (‘From the Earth to the Moon’ 1865) to the spread: in that story a voyage of lunar exploration begins with the crew being blasted out of a gigantic cannon, in Tampa Florida. The strong diagonal and the coronal spread of muzzle-flash sparks draw the eye up, to where Riou has arranged the title to superpose the ‘X’ of extraordinare over the moon's circle, like a target to be hit (ironically, in the novel's sequel, Autour de la Lune (‘Around the Moon’ 1869) the spaceship is thrown off course and doesn't reach its target, instead orbiting the moon and returning to Earth).  

 

Hetzel and Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires series had run to 54 novels by the time of Verne's death in 1905 (more titles were added posthumously by Verne's son Michel, who rather disingenuously published them under his father's name). They were, to use the modern idiom, the market leaders, and their success was widely imitated. Here for example is Le Maître de l'Abîme (‘The Master of the Abyss’ 1905), a futuristic submarine adventure by Jean Grousset (1844-1909), writing under the pseudonym of André Laurie:

Laurie published his own series, in plagiaristic imitation of Hetzel and Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires, called La Vie de Collège: ‘the Lifelong School’ (subtitle ‘in every time period, in every country’). Novels with a notional educational bent, some science-fictional. The covers, Verne-influenced, are very pretty, although the lettering runs-together Vie and de in a way that makes it seem the series is called La Viede Collège—‘the empty school’. An unfortunate confession of educative vacancy.

This series was not nearly as successful as the Voyages Extraordinaires, but the covers illustrate the influence of Hetzel's lavish deluxe visual idiom. Across the later decades of the century hundreds of science-fiction titles were published in this broad style. Here is a work by Paul de Sémant (the pseudonym of Paul Cousturier 1855-1915): Le Fulgur (1909), another high-tech futuristic submarine adventure that riffs on, or plagiarises, Verne's 20,000 Leagues. The cover is by the Spaniard artist José Marín-Baldo (1826-1891).