A FLOATING CITY, and THE BLOCKADE RUNNERS by Verne, Jules - 1874

1874. Translated from the French. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, & Searle, 1874. 40 pp ads dated August 1874. Original orange cloth decorated in black and gilt, beveled, all page edges gilt.

First British Edition, published in September 1874 -- the same month as Scribner Armstrong's American edition. This volume consists of two separate tales. The first is a fictionalized narrative of Verne's 1867 passage from Liverpool to New York aboard "The Great Eastern," the largest iron ship ever built and one of the wonders of its age. Her length was 692 feet, her beam was 120, her paddlewheels and propeller were larger than anything the ocean had ever seen, and she was designed to carry more passengers than the Queen Mary. Because of her size, "The Great Eastern" was the only ship capable of laying the great Atlantic Cable. The second tale is fictional, more in Verne's usual style: a Glasgow shipowner devises an adventurous plan to run the Union blockade of southern ports during the American Civil War, in order to bring a load of cotton back to his city's 25,000 idle looms. This copy is in orange cloth (we have also had a dark red copy and a green one -- no priority). It is in bright, near-fine condition (spine slightly faded as usual with this color cloth, occasional light foxing on the leaves within); the elaborate gilt design on the front cover remains bright, and atypically, the original peach endpapers are not cracked). In our experience, this London edition is considerably scarcer than the New York one. Taves & Michaluk V008; Myers 22.