6 Jules Verne first editions are documented on this shelf, from Five Weeks in a Balloon (Cinq semaines en ballon) (1863) to The Mysterious Island (1875) across 5 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Jules Verne title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.
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- Five Weeks in a Balloon (Cinq semaines en ballon) — 1863 · J. HetzelJ. Hetzel, Paris, 1863. The édition originale is the in-18 format (approx. 173 x 120 mm), 354 pp., with the subtitle "Voyage de découvertes en Afrique par trois Anglais, rédigé sur les notes du docteur Fergusson" — the wording "rédigé sur" is a point, later editions reading "rédigé d'après." First-issue points: the title page bears the initials "J H" at centre and does NOT carry "Seconde édition"; and pages 247,…. The French original (Hetzel, Paris, 1863) is unambiguously the true first — Verne's first novel and the inaugural title of the Voyages Extraordinaires — and the census call is correct. No English-language edition precedes it; every English edition is a translation and is therefore a "first thus" in English rather than the true first, however early. The census's specific attribution of the first US English edition…. Book-club issues do not apply to an 1863 French trade publication. The reprint tells are: "Seconde édition" on the title page — the second edition was announced under no. 3087 of the Bibliographie de la France on 4 April 1863, roughly two months after the first, and is otherwise identical to the first; the corrected pagination at pp. 247, 317, 337 and 342; the subtitle wording "rédigé d'après" in place of "rédigé….
- From the Earth to the Moon (De la Terre à la Lune) — 1865 · Pierre-Jules HetzelTrue first: Pierre-Jules Hetzel, Paris, published 25 October 1865, in one volume, in-18 format (approx. 11.5 x 18.2 cm), 302 pages plus an errata leaf and 17 pages of extract from the Hetzel bookshop catalogue; issued in demi-percaline chagrinée with smooth spine, gilt fillets and gilt author and title. THE CRITICAL POINT: the 1865 first edition is NOT illustrated. The illustrated grand in-8 Hetzel edition, with…. French original; Hetzel (Paris) 1865, in-18, is the true first — the census is right on publisher and year but wrong on what to look for, on two counts. (a) FIRST-THUS / CARTONNAGE TRAP: the census says "Hetzel cartonnage variants drive value". The celebrated Hetzel decorated cartonnages are 1868 and later; they are illustrated editions that postdate the true first and carry no precedence. The priority edition is…. For Verne the governing trap is the Hetzel cartonnage — decorated pictorial boards issued in many types across several decades. These are later illustrated issues, not the 1865 first; a cartonnage can postdate the true first by decades and is dated by binding type and by the bound-in catalogue. Later Hetzel double volumes pairing De la Terre à la Lune with Autour de la Lune begin in 1872 in French. In English,….
- Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas) — 1869–1870 (text first edition, two parts) / 1871 (first illustrated Hetzel grand in-8) · Pierre-Jules Hetzel, ParisTwo distinct "firsts" must be separated. (1) TEXT FIRST EDITION — the in-18 (small format), unillustrated typographic edition from Hetzel's Bibliothèque d'Éducation et de Récréation, issued in TWO PARTS with DIFFERENT YEARS: Première Partie published 28 October 1869 (title-page dated 1869), Deuxième Partie published 13 June 1870 (title-page dated 1870). CORRECTION to the submitted record: Part 1 is 1869, NOT 1870…. Precedence: The ORIGINAL-LANGUAGE FIRST is the French Hetzel edition — text first in the in-18 two-part edition, Part 1 (28 October 1869) and Part 2 (13 June 1870), Paris: J. Hetzel — with the celebrated first ILLUSTRATED edition (grand in-8, 111 De Neuville/Riou plates engraved by Hildibrand) following 16 November 1871; pre-original serialization began 20 March 1869 in the Magasin d'éducation et de récréation.…. No book-club edition bears on identifying the 19th-century first. Modern-market pitfall instead: the vast majority of "Hetzel" copies offered are later re-issues of the Voyages Extraordinaires in the "aux deux éléphants" cartonnage (from 1875, standard to ~1891) or still-later Hetzel/Hachette printings — these are NOT the 1871 first. In English, essentially all common copies are 20th-century reprints of the….
- A Journey to the Centre of the Earth — 1871 · Griffith & FarranThe first English-language edition was published by Griffith & Farran, London, for the Christmas trade in November 1871, though the title page is dated 1872 in Roman numerals (MDCCCLXXII) - the only British Verne first edition dated this way. It is bound in original pictorial cloth titled and decorated in gilt, illustrated with 52 wood engravings by Riou. The genuine first-issue frontispiece is 'The Descent of…. First English-language edition; the text is a loose adaptation rather than a faithful translation of Voyage au centre de la Terre. Any copy with 'The Central Sea' as frontispiece (rather than 'The Descent of the Crater,' with its accompanying pagination break) is a later Griffith & Farran printing, not the true first issue.
- Around the World in Eighty Days — 1873 · Sampson Low, Marston, Low & SearleThe first illustrated English edition was published by Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle, London, translated by George M. Towle, with sheets printed in 1873. True first-issue copies carry a title page dated 1873, which is extremely scarce; the overwhelming majority of surviving copies from the identical setting instead carry a title page dated 1874, and many of these 1874-dated copies still carry a publisher's…. The Sampson Low London edition (sheets of 1873) precedes the American Osgood edition of the same year, which was bound from sheets printed in London by Gilbert & Rivington from the Sampson Low setting, given a separate James R. Osgood & Co., Boston title page for the US market. Later Sampson Low reprints, including the reset early-20th-century 'Sampson Low, Marston & Company Ld' printings, use plainer bindings and postdate the 1873/1874-title-page first issue.
- The Mysterious Island — 1875 · Sampson Low, Marston, Low & SearleThe first English edition was published by Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle, London, in September 1875, issued as three separately titled volumes - Dropped from the Clouds, The Abandoned, and The Secret of the Island - rather than as a single continuous novel. The translation was credited on the title pages to W. H. G. Kingston, though it is now established that the work was substantially done by his wife,…. The Sampson Low three-volume London edition (September 1875) precedes Scribner's American edition (November 1875), which was printed from the same English plates. Twentieth-century abridged and juvenile one-volume reprints compress the three-part structure into a single continuous narrative and drop the individual volume titles, so a genuine first edition must retain the three separately titled volumes.
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