AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS – THE 1874 PLAY (hardback)
ISBN 9781629335506
Volume 6 of the Palik Series, published in conjunction with the North American Jules Verne Society
Jules Verne’s most famous novel was originally conceived as a play—and had its greatest nineteenth century success as a stage play that was adapted by Verne. The play ran for thousands of performances in many different countries, including the United States.
Here is the original play script, translated directly from the French by the producers of the original Broadway presentation. The play has been unpublished since 1874.
Verne collaborated with Adolphe d’Ennery to create a distinctive version of the story that features many different characters and episodes than are in his novel.
Included in this volume is an Introduction about how the play was created and staged, followed by the the first-ever translation of Verne’s essay, “The Meridians and the Calendar,” explaining how the fictional Phileas Fogg accomplished his feat of going around the world in eighty days.
By Jules Verne and Adolphe d’Ennery. The original translation commissioned by the Kiralfy Brothers. Introduction by Philippe Burgaud, with Jean-Michel Margot and Brian Taves. Afterword, “The Meridians and the Calendar,” by Jules Verne, Translated and Annotated by Jean-Louis Trudel. Appendix, "The Play on Screen," by Brian Taves.
This series is published in conjunction with the North American Jules Verne Society, najvs.org.
Reviewed by Donald M. Hassler
“The Rescue of Jules Verne the Writer,” Extrapolation 53.3 (Fall 2012): 379-382.
Here are four new volumes published under the auspices of and with the support of The North American Jules Verne Society. They are the most recent product of a remarkable two decades of scholarly activity in English with Verne texts that has ranged from a rather abortive start by the University of Nebraska Press with a 1998 edition through some excellent editions afterwards by Nebraska, by Oxford University and Wesleyan University Presses, and by Prometheus Books. Brian Taves describes this overall scholarly activity well in his opening essay to the first installment. The publisher for all four volumes is BearManor Media located in Albany, Georgia; the copyright is held by The North American Jules Verne Society. The series, which has more volumes projected, is named in honor of a late benefactor of the NAJVS, Edward D. Palik. The editorial team includes distinguished translators and scholars of Verne. The whole project to date has not only produced these beautiful and thorough books but also opened up again the scholarly treasure chest of puzzles about how to translate Verne and what to make of the important writings of his that are not yet in English. I think that every library and every serious student of Verne, sf, and French literature needs to get these four volumes and to sign up for what is yet to come. The work here, and the scholarly activity behind it, tells us how misunderstood this very popular writer has been. Taves presents a major literary mapping of what is important to us as we try to sort out the relation of genre sf to mainstream literature.
In another part of the scholarly apparatus to the first volume, translator Edward Baxter writes, "According to an article published in the Swiss newsweekly Hebdo in May, 1989, the three most widely translated literary works in the world are, in order, the Bible, the writings of V.l. Lenin, and the novels of Jules Verne" (83). Clearly, Verne was very popular for his massive mix of "boy story" and early sf so that to meet the demand the number of translations referred to by Baxter proliferated and, what is more, defined the writer. This current project by the NAJVS, as well as the work coming from the university presses mentioned above, has the clear intention of redefining the writer that Verne was. Every text published here is new in English translation. But even the French study of Verne and the French awareness of his literary accomplishment will be somewhat shaped again by these efforts since even some of the French manuscripts are new discoveries that had been locked away in trunks and not used during Verne's career as a writer. Taves, who is the prime editor for each of these new volumes, titles his opening essay "The Mission of the Palik Series" and writes, "[W]e have assembled scholars and translators, 'the Jules Verne rescue team,' as we have been dubbed by our dean, Walter James Miller" (1).
One set of literary effects that has been rescued in the first volume is Verne the fledgling writer before he discovered the 1856 Baudelaire translation of Edgar Allan Poe stories titled by Baudelaire Histoires extraordinaires. Poe became the model for the Verne Voyages extraordinaires that set his popular career on the road to its popular status with Lenin and the Bible. But the early short stories are not in this mode at all. The principal fiction revived in the first volume is a story titled in translation "The Marriage of Mr. Anselme des Tilleuls," which was written at some point in the 1850s. It was not published until 199 1 in Switzerland. Baxter's translation is its first appearance in English. I think Taves and his fellow scholars do a fine job trying to unravel the bibliographic mystery of the manuscript and its publication history (one scholar has said that all of Verne is a "bibliographic nightmare"). More importantly, this new NAJVS volume begins the discussion of effects in the story. It is a comic and "filial" story not only about a funny marriage but also about generational allegiance and the past. It is grounded on Latin grammar and etymology and offers a wonderful, even uncanny, premonition of how sons and fathers interact. I say premonition because the most interesting line of Verne scholarship in our time has to do with the ways in which his son, Michel, changed (and added to) his work after his death so that the Vernian library of texts extends far into the twentieth century with discoveries we have made in the twenty-first century. This early story, in any case, is deep with resonance and highly literary in its effects - and very comic. The latter point, to me especially, suggests origins for a comic response to sensawonder adventure and science that continues in Verne's well-known work.
In addition to Poe as well as Latin grammar, the young Verne paid close attention to what could be read and mined by writers from the tradition. Like many students of the eighteenth century, he valued Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (17 19) immensely; but Verne actually thought (again in a sort of filial way) that the later derivative by Johann Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson (18 12), was the more important model because it included family context. The second volume in the Taves set includes the rejected manuscript of Marooned with Uncle Robinson in addition to some prefaces hitherto unpublished in English to his Robinsonades. Here again the fate of the last of Verne's Robinsonades, The Eternal Adam, is unclear since we do not know, from the evidence thus far, how much was changed by Michel after Verne's death. That mysterious story is told in this second volume with the conclusion that, regardless of authorship, "critics are agreed that [The Eternal Adam] is a masterpiece" (17). The translator of Marooned with Uncle Robinson is Sidney Kravitz, who also recently did the translation and the fine, critical edition of the fiction that Verne reworked from "Marooned" titled The Mysterious Island. The wonderful Ray Harryhausen movie adaptation of the latter text is well-noted in the Taves volume, and just as in all four volumes, the reproduced illustrations both from printed texts and from the film are an added bonus.
Another literary mode that tends to be ignored in Verne studies when his "boy story" adventures predominate is the drama. For Georges Sand, Robert Browning, and others in nineteenth-century literature, the theater was an arena in which they wanted to excel even if their reputations were built in other writing modes. In fact, one of the early scholarly revivals of a Verne text that anticipates this Palik Series is the scholarly edition published by Prometheus Books in 2003 of Edward Baxter's translation of Journey Through the Impossible. The text for this drama was only discovered in 1978 in the archives of the Censorship Office of the Third French Republic. Now the Palik Series brings to English readers four additional new plays by Verne that range from comedies to considerations of evolutionary dynamics; again included are magnificent reproductions of nineteenth-century illustrations. The final volume of the four initial Palik Series books is an historical romance, closely researched by Verne and in the tradition of Walter Scott and Dumas père. Taves's introduction to the volume, "Verne's Forgotten Swashbuckler," is a probing essay on another mode of writing that we had not often associated with Verne. Baxter is the translator again. Several other scholars are involved in the apparatus. It is a rich pleasure to read all four of these new volumes, and I am certain they will contribute to much more scholarly and critical work on the remarkable Jules Verne.
Jules Verne fans will enjoy thistranslation of his stage adaptation
By George Larkinon February 1,2016
JulesVerne fans will enjoy this translation of his stage adaptation, and best ofall, the publisher has included a tantalizing set of extras, includingnineteenth century engravings of the show and highly detailed elaborations ofthe back stories associated with the play. For a frame of reference,editor Brian Taves provides an analyses of various film versions. If you’veenjoyed the well-known novel or any of the film adaptations, you’ll doublyenjoy the way Verne weaves new characters and events into the famous story, andyou can easily see how the play could entice theatergoers even today.
By Alex Kirstukason February11, 2014
Most volumes in this series, a labor of love by experts on JulesVerne, focus on showcasing Verne’s depth and breadth as a writer. This onecertainly does that, but it also adds a fascinating new dimension: Verne as amultimedia phenomenon.
Just asmost Americans today know him mostly from Hollywood adaptations, most people inhis own time and place knew Verne from the spectacular, special-effects-filledstage plays he made out of his novels. This book’s introductorymaterial describes how Verne adapted “Around the World in 80 Days” into along-running international hit with help from a colorful character indeed, awhizkid showman called Adolphe D’Ennery. The heart of the book is devoted to afaithful vintage translation of their adaptation, complete with 19th-centuryengravings of the show and bookended with other visual memorabilia. The resultis a highly effective evocation of what must have been a thrilling production:one can almost smell the gas fumes from the footlights, feel the excitement runthrough the house at every scenic surprise, hear the Parisians applaud as thecurtain drops.
Most exciting of all, however, is discovering how Verne andD'Ennery twisted and tugged at the well-known novel to make it work on thestage. Just as every Hollywood producer has done, they made significantchanges, including new major characters and scenes. Some of the changes showtheir age all too clearly; the play is nowhere near as fluid orbelievable as the novel, and one uncomfortable bit involves a blackfacedisguise. On the other hand, many of the add-ons work so well that theirtheatricality leaps off the page; one of the added subplots, involving a rivaleccentric traveling with Phileas Fogg, furnishes not only lots of snappy banterbut also some highly touching moments. And the book finishes off with two extrabonuses: a rarely published essay by Verne himself about Fogg’s achievement,and an engrossing new article revealing that the stage adaptation was itselfadapted twice to yet another medium, the 20th-century screen.
AtAmazon’s request, and in the interest of full disclosure, I should note inpassing that I’m connected to the Verne society that put this book together andthat I got a chance to preview it gratis (though I was not involved in itsproduction and do not stand to profit by it). However, in this case, I believemy personal affection for Verne is beside the point; with its fascinating playscriptcenterpiece and evocative extra material, this volume should delight not onlythe writer’s fans, but anyone interested in how creative works are adapted andrepurposed for new media. Which, in today's cultural climate of reboots,remixes, and mashups of every kind, should be just about everybody.
Around the World in 80 Days - The 1874 Play
By Steven A. Joyceon April 11,2013
JulesVerne, of course, wrote in French and the compilers of this volume have gone toamazingly great lengths to obtain and present original 19th century Englishtranslated material. They also supplied a duo of enlightening essays outlining themetamorphosis of the yarn be it on printed page, on stage or on screen. Anabundance of rare engravings, postcards, caricatures, photos, advertisements,programs, posters and even stereograms round out the supplemental material.
In Americanized theatrical form, Around the World in 80 Days is a fine read asboth an introduction to the famed exploits of Phileas Fogg and as a fresh lookat an old favorite. It would even make a good first taste of Verne period.
A genuine treat.
Editor interview from On the Commentary Track with Frank Thompson
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