Look! It's the Sea-Unicorn, and a big one, too

February 25, 2007 2:04 PM

The Jules Verne Collecting Resource. If you're a Verne fan or a book collector at all, this site is an absolute treasure. There are pictures of almost every single edition of his works, major and minor, as well as everything even slightly Verne-related, including: movie posters, matchbooks, autographs, playing cards, cards for stereoscopes, postcards he sent, board games, Jules Hetzel's excellent covers and posters for his work (more here, and this one is amazing), the man himself, and god knows what else - pretty much everything.
If it's not here, it's somewhere else, like the extraordinary maps which adorned some editions, or the virtual library with links to all of his works, the many, many incredible illustrations therein, and even one scanned manuscript (in French, obviously). Hope this makes somebody's day as much as it made mine.
posted by BlackLeotardFront (16 comments total)

What a collection you've found. Very nice.
posted by nola at 2:17 PM on February 25, 2007

[[Jules Verne in popular culture]]
#REDIRECT [http://www.julesverne.ca/index.html]
posted by stbalbach at 2:27 PM on February 25, 2007

This is really great, BlackLeotardFront... I'm not a Jules Verne aficionado, but I think the site you found is fascinating... I especially like the games link.
posted by amyms at 2:31 PM on February 25, 2007

Fantastic! I bought Vingt mille lieues sous les mers not two hours ago!

I had no idea Verne wrote so many books.
posted by niccolo at 2:32 PM on February 25, 2007

And with 118 illustrations from Vingt mille lieues sous les mers — très fantastique!

Alphonse (see no. 107, 108, 109) vs. Walt.
posted by cenoxo at 2:53 PM on February 25, 2007

I had no idea Verne wrote so many books.
I would be cautious about diving in. Many of the translations are old and poor, and the quality for his work was not consistent. His best works are his most well known, mostly early.
posted by stbalbach at 3:58 PM on February 25, 2007

I am a true Verne fan, and on my web scourings i have found this great website. There is TONS of info about Verne's works.

As stbalbach mentioned, the translation quality varies, but i have found that most Gutenberg
translations are decent.

Another good resource for Verne afficinados is Jules Verne Virtual Library

English translation to some of his works are next to impossible to find online (and offline)

I'd like to take this occasion to point out the myth about Verne's works. Most people think that Verne wrote children's books, but this is far from the truth.

Early english translators have MODIFIED and CUT most of his books due to Verne's portrayal of Englishmen in his novels. These oversimplified translations of the books have caused people to think that he is a children's author.
Modern translations are alot more accurate.

Also I'd like to reccomand everyone who likes adventure/geography novels to check out Jules Verne's works;
posted by victorashul at 4:13 PM on February 25, 2007

Nice find. The Mysterious Island is one of my favorites.
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 4:24 PM on February 25, 2007

I've never read any Jules Verne, but this is just such a thorough post that I had to favorite it!
posted by serazin at 6:52 PM on February 25, 2007

Wow, great site. Just beginning to go through the illustrations and have found so many that are truly gorgeous, thanks. And victorashul, I don't know much about Verne, but your comment about the edits due to Verne's portrayal of English people made me curious; Wikipedia discusses it a bit but if you have any more info I'd be interested.
posted by mediareport at 6:56 PM on February 25, 2007

Er, sites. :)
posted by mediareport at 7:01 PM on February 25, 2007

niccolo said: I had no idea Verne wrote so many books.

In later years and after his death, Jules had a little help from his son, Michel. An 1888 story attributed to them both is the futuristic vision In the Year 2889 (French title La journée d’un journaliste américain en 2889):

The plot of "In the Year 2889" is undeniably prophetic in both subject and tone. It portrays a day in the busy life of the managing editor of the world’s largest newspaper in New York City (now called Centropolis). This narrative framework serves quite well as a stepping-stone for a detailed description of this entire future world, its technological advancements, its international relations, and its (ironically, still quite 19th-century) social mores.

Among the many technological, political, and social predictions featured in "In the Year 2889" are air-cars, air-buses, and air-trains, energy accumulators that provide unlimited power, the "telephote" (videophone), the annexation of Great Britain and Canada by the United States, global climate control, food piped into homes, mechanized dressing-rooms that wash, shave, and clothe their pampered occupants, interplanetary communication (and the discovery of one planet, referred to as "Olympus," said to be beyond the orbit of Neptune), computers (called "totalizers"), commercial advertisements projected onto the clouds, the perfection of color photography ("invented at the end of the twentieth century by the Japanese"), cryogenics, trans-Atlantic submarine tubes by which "one travels from Paris (to Centropolis) in two hundred and ninety-five minutes," and a host of other highly imaginative innovations.

The JVCR has some illustrations from a 1910 release.
posted by cenoxo at 7:36 PM on February 25, 2007

English translation to some of his works are next to impossible to find online (and offline)

True; I've been looking for an English translation of Will of an Eccentric for years.
posted by Inkslinger at 1:31 AM on February 26, 2007

About 18 inches from tip to tail. That downturned horn's nearly 18 feet long.
posted by mjbraun at 9:51 AM on February 26, 2007

Heh, mjbraun, you win!

And for the record, the translation which I read of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was the Louis Mercier one from 1872, here. I highly recommend his other translations (if there are any).
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:57 AM on February 26, 2007

(one week later) Can anyone else access the links? We seem to have completely destroyed the site. that's bad, because I wanted to look up an edition...
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 7:43 PM on March 2, 2007