Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. by Verne, Jules - 1873

Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1873. First American edition of Verne's masterpiece. Octavo, original blue cloth. With "The End" printed on page 303, illustrated with 109 plates, including two maps, with jellyfish on the front board, and the incorrect use of the word "Sea" in the title on front board. In very good condition with some rubbing and wear to the extremities and a small stain to the page edges. Although the reason for the scarcity is unknown, it is speculated that most of the Osgood copies were destroyed in the Great Boston Fire. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. "Twenty Thousand Leagues owed much to the exploits of the huge experimental French submarine Le Plongeur and to the work of Verne’s friend Jacques-François Conseil, who developed a steam-driven submarine and whose surname Verne gave to Professor Arronax’s servant in the story" (Carpenter & Prichard, 557). Verne combined science and invention with fast-paced adventure. Some of Verne's fiction has also become a fact: his submarine Nautilus predated the first successful power submarine by a quarter century, and his spaceship predicted the development a century later. The first all-electric submarine, built in 1886, was named Nautilus in honor of Verne's vessel. The first nuclear-powered submarine, launched in 1955, was named Nautilus, too. The film version was produced by Walt Disney in 1954 and directed by Richard Fleischer, won an Oscar for its special effects.