Travel Scholarships

Notes

{ 325 Notes PreFaCe 1. For an overview of this increase in English-language works by or on Verne since 1965, see Arthur B. Evans, “Jules Verne in English: A Bibliography of Modern Editions and Scholarly Studies.” Verniana 1 (2008–2009): 9–22, accessed August 8, 2012, http://www.verniana.org/volumes/01/HTML/ArtBiblio.html. 2. See the North American Jules Verne Society’s advertisement for their Palik book series (2012), accessed August 8, 2012, http://www.najvs.org/palikseries .shtml. introduCtion 1. In 1866, following the international success of Verne’s earliest novels, his editor/publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel decided to collect Verne’s works into a series called the Extraordinary Voyages. At that time, Hetzel outlined the (rather hyperbolic) pedagogical goals for this series in the following terms: M. Jules Verne has succeeded in creating a new genre. What is promised so often and what is delivered so rarely—instruction that is entertaining, and entertainment that instructs—M. Verne gives both, unsparingly, in each one of his exciting narratives. [. . .] Young or old, rich or poor, learned or uneducated, all will find both pleasure and profit from these excellent books. [. . .] They are sure to become friends to the entire family and will occupy a front shelf in their home’s library. New works by M. Jules Verne will be added to this series, which we shall always keep up-to-date. [. . .] The goal of the series is, in fact, to outline all the geographical, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science, and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format that is all his own, the history of the universe. “Avertissement de l’éditeur” (in Jules Verne, Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras. [Paris: Hetzel, 1866], 1–2). 2. The term “science fiction” (SF) did not come into popular usage until the late 1930s. When he first began writing them in the early 1860s, Verne dubbed his scientific-adventure narratives romans scientifiques (scientific novels).Today, some literary scholars distinguish between Verne’s “hard” brand of SF—perhaps n o t e s t o P a r t i 326 } more accurately called “scientific fiction”—and the many subsequent “softer” and more fantastic variants of SF as practiced by Albert Robida, H. G. Wells (who preferred to refer to his own tales as “scientific romances”), J.-H. Rosny aîné, and the contributors to the American SF pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. The earliest of such SF pulp magazines—Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories— featured a drawing of Verne’s tombstone on its masthead and labeled this new type of literature “scientifiction.” 3. Gazette du Vieux Paris, n° 1, 15 avril MDCCC, et n° 2, 1 mai MDCCC. 4. The Amazing Adventures of the Barsac Mission (L’Étonnante Aventure de la mission Barsac), a two-volume novel in Michel Verne’s version. Jules Verne had conceived a one-volume novel of seventeen chapters, of which only four and a half were sketched out by the author under the temporary title of Study Trip (Voyage d’études). 5. The “Game of the Goose” (Jeu de l’Oie) was a very popular board game in France where players would throw dice and move their pieces along a winding path of squares, many of which were painted with a lucky goose (which allowed them to move further ahead); the first player to reach the end would win. In Verne’s “real-life” version appearing in The Will of an Eccentric, the 60-plus squares on the board represent the states of the United States (including the District of Columbia and the Indian Territory), with Illinois being the goose and listed fourteen times.When landing on each square, the player would be required to move ahead or backwards to a different square, to pay a fee, to remain frozen in place until another player landed on the square, etc. The players would thus race against each other (by train, motorcar, riverboat, etc.) from state to state throughout the country in order to win the grand prize of some sixty million dollars . See Terry Harpold, “The Providential Grace of Verne’s Le Testament d’un excentrique.” IRIS 28 (2005): 157–68. 6. Le Gaulois, 13 novembre 1900; Bibliothèque municipale d’Amiens, JV MS 18 et 21. 7. Jean-Michel Margot and Daniel Compère, eds. Entretiens avec Jules Verne 1873–1905. Geneva: Slatkine, 1998. 8. Unpublished letter to his sister Marie Guillon dated January 6, 1894 (a copy of which...