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      Pierre Jules Hetzel (1814-1886), publisher and writer under the pseudonym of “P-J Stahl” he was a fervent republican. Exiled in Brussels, after the coup of 2 December 1851, he came back to Paris in 1860 and settled 18 Rue Jacob. It is in this office that very probably his meeting with Jules Verne took place. The novel that the latter suggested him was a manuscript entitled Le voyage en l'air and became Cinq semaines en ballon. Published by Hetzel in January 1863, in a non-illustrated series, which was not especially meant for a young public, this work marked the beginning of a long literary collaboration. Jules Verne signed, with as years went by several contracts with the Hetzel house. He also collaborated, from the first number (March 1864 20th), to the new review, Le Magasin d' Education et de Récréation. In this beautiful magazine appeared most of Jules Verne's works in pre-original editing, the first ones being the polar novel form the very serious such as serials of dailies such as Le journal des débats or Le temps. Jules Verne's novels were grouped, from 1866, into an illustrated collection whose general title was Extraordinary Travels in Known and Unknown worlds. The Author and the Publisher conceived a new literary plan: a long series of works able to describe, under the novel form, the entire earth. A genre is born: the geographic novel. Though the Hetzel Publisher had published the great writers of the French XIX century was (Balzac, Hugo, Musset, Sand) his name was above all linked with the success of his books endorned with the famous golden cardboard illustrated by excellent artists (Férat, Riou, Neuville, Benett, Rous…). The titles of Extraordinary Travels of the first period are very famous : Cinq semaines en ballon, Journey to the centre of the Earth, From Earth to the Moon and the remainder Around the Moon, Captain Grant’s children, Twenty thousand leagues under the seas with his famous hero, Captain Nemo. In 1863, after the success of his first novel Cinq semaines en ballon, Jules Verne suggested to Hetzel afuturistic manuscript that the latter refused firmly : Paris au XX siècle. Found again and published in 1994, this novel knows today an unprecedented success. . . . I . . . Precedent I Continuation . . . I High of page I |
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