Doing some research for the book I'm working on, I dug around to find some reviews from the original appearances of novels by Jules Verne. These three come from
The Times in 1871-73 and show how wondrous and new Verne's work felt at the time. I thought I'd share them... I hate to see research go to waste...
“
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Griffith and Farran), translated from the French of Jules Verne, is a compound of wild imagination and sound science. An adventurous uncle and his nephews descend the crater of a volcano of Iceland, and reach a central sea, where they encounter majestic geysers, pre-historic men and animals, mushroom forests, and other marvels. After many strange and fearful adventures their raft floats for days and nights on a boiling stream which courses furiously through the bowels of the earth, the water changes to lava, the wind to an “incandescent blast,” and, finally, they are shot out unharmed upon the slopes of Stromboli. The engravings are by Rion
(sic), and excellent.” (
The Times, 25 December 1871)
“The pill of science was never more seductively sugared over than in
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (Sampson Low), translated from the French of Jules Verne, the author of
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Boys will be delighted with this wild story, through which scientific truth and the most frantic fiction walk cheek by jowl. The chief personage is a certain Captain Nemo, commander of the Nautilus, a cigar-shaped vessel which can stream to the bottom of the Atlantic, carry down supplies of oxygen and compressed air, which is served out to the crew like grog. She explores the depths of the ocean, and her wonderous discoveries and doings shrivel into nothing the results expected from the Challenger expedition. This monster of the deep can lie at anchor 100 fathoms under the waves, lighting the black waters for a league by means of an electric lantern flaming at her bows. The scientific men on board of her take note of the strange creatures that rub their noses against the plate-glass windows of the cabin, and now and then Captain Nemo and his friends put on their submarine armour, and, taking a walk along the ocean bed, explore a coral forest or ransack an ancient wreck. The Nautilus passes close to the hull of the Vengeur, and Captain Nemo repeats the fable which tells how the crew nailed the colours to the mast, and went down with their ship sooner than surrender. As a matter of history, the Vengeur surrendered in the ordinary way, but the story of her sinking with all hands to the shout of
“Vive la République!” is too firmly planted in the French mind to be uprooted by any evidence. But M. Verne professes to teach, not naval, but natural history, and this he does in a delightful manner. The wild adventures of Captain Nemo and his men in their submarine vessel, how they explored the city of Atlantis, gathered the gold of the Vigo galleons, and did many other wonderful things, will fascinate young readers, who in the midst of their wonder and excitement will learn, without at all suspecting that they are being taught, a great deal about the swimming and creeping and growing things that inhabit the lands and waters of the great deep. They must not, however, take all M. Verne’s natural history for gospel, for he does not stop at the boundary of existing knowledge, but in the freest and easiest manner clears up every mystery in the earth and water under it. His speculations are attractive even to older folk; some day half his marvels may come true, and then this voyage of the Nautilus will be quoted as a remarkable forecast of scientific discovery. At present it is an excellent boy’s book, and as we turn over its pages to the last wild picture of the Nautilus caught in the Maelstrom we devoutly wish we were a boy to enjoy it again.” (
The Times, 24 December 1872)
“
From the Earth to the Moon (Sampson Low), and
The Fur Country (Sampson Low), are translation of two of M. Jules Verne’s wild and wondrous books. These tales are very popular in France, and as the love of the marvellous is no stronger in French than in English boys, they will, no doubt, be well appreciated by the latter, especially as they are full of pictures. As for
From the Earth to the Moon, it is enough to give one brain fever to read it. All through his reckless heaping up of impossibilities the author preserves a quiet matter-of-fact air, and his thousand and one frantic imaginings are put on paper in cool, collected, and minute descriptions, which fairly make the reader gasp. When the narrative is at its maddest, the sense of reality is still perfect, though frightfully bewildering, and the clever imposture is kept up by the continual addition of those small realistic touches which encompass a story with an atmosphere of absolute truth. M. Verne’s books are certainly exceedingly clever, and deserve all imaginable success. Their sensation is at once terribly thrilling and absolutely harmless. The materials of his tales of mystery are perfectly innocent, and though they play fast and loose with facts in a manner which might make a savant’s hair stand on end, they really teach a great deal in an easy and agreeable way. Scientific extravaganzas such as these before us are not only much better food for boys’ minds than the sensational love-stories we often see them reading, but boys themselves like them better. The account of the manufacture of the great gun which shot to the moon a hollow projectile carrying passengers; the incidents of the aerial voyage; and the manner in which, after coursing round the satellite at a short distance from its surface, the intrepid travellers managed to shoot themselves back again to their own world, will hold young readers in breathless delight. They will be disappointed, though, to find that the adventurers do not actually set foot on lunar soil, and, really, after having got his people so far, M. Verne might as well have allowed them to land fairly on the satellite, instead of skimming round it.
The Fur Country is not quite such a Munchausen story; nevertheless, a good number of impossibilities are related with consummate gravity. The author shows a perfect familiarity with Arctic phenomena, and his wild tale is again strewed with useful knowledge.” (
The Times, 20 December 1873)
“A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Griffith and Farran), translated from the French of Jules Verne, is a compound of wild imagination and sound science. An adventurous uncle and his nephews descend the crater of a volcano of Iceland, and reach a central sea, where they encounter majestic geysers, pre-historic men and animals, mushroom forests, and other marvels. After many strange and fearful adventures their raft floats for days and nights on a boiling stream which courses furiously through the bowels of the earth, the water changes to lava, the wind to an “incandescent blast,” and, finally, they are shot out unharmed upon the slopes of Stromboli. The engravings are by Rion (sic), and excellent.” (The Times, 25 December 1871)
“The pill of science was never more seductively sugared over than in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (Sampson Low), translated from the French of Jules Verne, the author of A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Boys will be delighted with this wild story, through which scientific truth and the most frantic fiction walk cheek by jowl. The chief personage is a certain Captain Nemo, commander of the Nautilus, a cigar-shaped vessel which can stream to the bottom of the Atlantic, carry down supplies of oxygen and compressed air, which is served out to the crew like grog. She explores the depths of the ocean, and her wonderous discoveries and doings shrivel into nothing the results expected from the Challenger expedition. This monster of the deep can lie at anchor 100 fathoms under the waves, lighting the black waters for a league by means of an electric lantern flaming at her bows. The scientific men on board of her take note of the strange creatures that rub their noses against the plate-glass windows of the cabin, and now and then Captain Nemo and his friends put on their submarine armour, and, taking a walk along the ocean bed, explore a coral forest or ransack an ancient wreck. The Nautilus passes close to the hull of the Vengeur, and Captain Nemo repeats the fable which tells how the crew nailed the colours to the mast, and went down with their ship sooner than surrender. As a matter of history, the Vengeur surrendered in the ordinary way, but the story of her sinking with all hands to the shout of “Vive la République!” is too firmly planted in the French mind to be uprooted by any evidence. But M. Verne professes to teach, not naval, but natural history, and this he does in a delightful manner. The wild adventures of Captain Nemo and his men in their submarine vessel, how they explored the city of Atlantis, gathered the gold of the Vigo galleons, and did many other wonderful things, will fascinate young readers, who in the midst of their wonder and excitement will learn, without at all suspecting that they are being taught, a great deal about the swimming and creeping and growing things that inhabit the lands and waters of the great deep. They must not, however, take all M. Verne’s natural history for gospel, for he does not stop at the boundary of existing knowledge, but in the freest and easiest manner clears up every mystery in the earth and water under it. His speculations are attractive even to older folk; some day half his marvels may come true, and then this voyage of the Nautilus will be quoted as a remarkable forecast of scientific discovery. At present it is an excellent boy’s book, and as we turn over its pages to the last wild picture of the Nautilus caught in the Maelstrom we devoutly wish we were a boy to enjoy it again.” (The Times, 24 December 1872)
“From the Earth to the Moon (Sampson Low), and The Fur Country (Sampson Low), are translation of two of M. Jules Verne’s wild and wondrous books. These tales are very popular in France, and as the love of the marvellous is no stronger in French than in English boys, they will, no doubt, be well appreciated by the latter, especially as they are full of pictures. As for From the Earth to the Moon, it is enough to give one brain fever to read it. All through his reckless heaping up of impossibilities the author preserves a quiet matter-of-fact air, and his thousand and one frantic imaginings are put on paper in cool, collected, and minute descriptions, which fairly make the reader gasp. When the narrative is at its maddest, the sense of reality is still perfect, though frightfully bewildering, and the clever imposture is kept up by the continual addition of those small realistic touches which encompass a story with an atmosphere of absolute truth. M. Verne’s books are certainly exceedingly clever, and deserve all imaginable success. Their sensation is at once terribly thrilling and absolutely harmless. The materials of his tales of mystery are perfectly innocent, and though they play fast and loose with facts in a manner which might make a savant’s hair stand on end, they really teach a great deal in an easy and agreeable way. Scientific extravaganzas such as these before us are not only much better food for boys’ minds than the sensational love-stories we often see them reading, but boys themselves like them better. The account of the manufacture of the great gun which shot to the moon a hollow projectile carrying passengers; the incidents of the aerial voyage; and the manner in which, after coursing round the satellite at a short distance from its surface, the intrepid travellers managed to shoot themselves back again to their own world, will hold young readers in breathless delight. They will be disappointed, though, to find that the adventurers do not actually set foot on lunar soil, and, really, after having got his people so far, M. Verne might as well have allowed them to land fairly on the satellite, instead of skimming round it. The Fur Country is not quite such a Munchausen story; nevertheless, a good number of impossibilities are related with consummate gravity. The author shows a perfect familiarity with Arctic phenomena, and his wild tale is again strewed with useful knowledge.” (The Times, 20 December 1873)
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