Jules Verne’s "Round The Moon" First Edition, Title Variant, 1881.

VERNE, Jules. Round the Moon: A Sequel to From the Earth to the Moon. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1881.

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Author’s illustrated edition. Small octavo. 192 pp. First English edition title Round the Moon rather than Around the Moon. Translated by Louise Mercier and Eleanor E. King. Original blue cloth, elaborately blind-stamped and gilt-decorated to boards and spine, all edges gilt. Illustrated with numerous full-page wood engravings after drawings by Émile Bayard and Alphonse de Neuville.

Contents are clean with light foxing, as usual; decorative prize bookplate dated April 1883 to front pastedown. Binding is sound and square, gilt remains bright, light shelf wear to exteriors with minor bumping to corners.

Almost prophetic, Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon exhibits striking parallels to the real-life Apollo program, particularly Apollo 8, the first U.S. manned mission to orbit the Moon. Written almost a century before, Jules Verne's prophetic novel of man's race to the stars is a classic adventure tale with scientific acumen. From the Earth to the Moon is “the first interplanetary novel to focus on the technical and organizational preparations for the voyage, using the actual blast-off as a climax, introducing thereby a new narrative realism. Around the Moon continues the story by describing the experiences of the intrepid voyagers as they observe the Moon en passant before a slingshot effect hurls them earthward again. The couplet is one of the definitive foundation stones of the Science Fiction genre” (Barron:II:1180).