VERNE, Jules.

£7,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

De la Terre à la Lune. First edition in book form, in the publisher's deluxe shagreen-backed binding, advertised on the final page of the publisher's end catalogue: "1/2 chagrin, doré sur tranches". Hetzel's stock was available in wrappers, in "cartonné, tranches blanches", and in this deluxe binding, the most expensive of the three issues.Verne's work launched "the most important lunar voyage in science-fiction. [It is] the first hard science-fiction novel with full recognition that the preparations for a moon voyage may be just as interesting as the lunar voyage itself. It is also one of the first lunar voyages written from the point of view of scientific adventure, rather than as personal satire or religious speculation" (Bleiler).The calculations in the book, such as the escape velocity required to leave Earth's orbit, were produced with the assistance of the mathematicians Joseph Bertrand and the author's cousin Henri Garcet. Verne's scientific ideas inspired Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a father of astronautics who envisioned multistage rockets as a feasible alternative to the large cannon or "space gun" design he encountered in the story. Just over a century after its publication, the tale was cited by Neil Armstrong during his own lunar voyage on Apollo 11. The work was also famously adapted by Georges Méliès for the film A Trip to the Moon (1902).The story was serialized in Journal des Débats politiques et littéraires from 14 September to 14 October 1865. Verne wrote a se

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