DR. OX'S EXPERIMENT, and other Stories

1875. With Numerous Illustrations. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1875. Original terra-cotta cloth pictorially decorated in black and gilt, beveled.

First American fully-illustrated edition, from the sheets of the first British edition. These four tales include three that are among Jules Verne's earliest: "A Drama in the Air" (appeared in a periodical in 1851, his second story), "Master Zacharius" (1854, his fourth), and "A Winter amid the Ice" (1855, his fifth); "Dr. Ox's Experiment" itself did not appear until 1872. (Also included is "Ascent of Mont Blanc" by his brother Paul Verne.) Osgood had published the first edition in English in mid-1874, in a small unillustrated volume. William F. Gill of Boston published the first American (somewhat-) illustrated edition, dated 1874, under the title FROM THE CLOUDS TO THE MOUNTAINS. Then this copiously-illustrated Osgood edition came out in mid-1875, priced at a hefty $3.00. The front cover shows Master Zacharius raising the trap door in the floor of his workshop, and the spine shows the earthbound "madman" who had fallen from the balloon in "A Drama in the Air." This copy is in terra-cotta cloth (others are in green or blue -- no priority). It is an unusually bright, very nearly fine copy (the slightest hint of wear at the top of the spine, magazine illustration tipped to the front endpaper). Taves & Michaluk V012; Myers 16.