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INTRO: Did Jules Verne have a jewish publisher in 1860?
Much has been written about the illustrative life of french adventure novelist jules verne, from.his early days growing up in the shadow of his stern and strict lawyer father to his teenage romances with young lovelies who stole his heart and then were suddenly ''married off'' to more promising male prospects by other stern and strict fathers who didnt want their daughters to marry the dreamy-eyed Verne...Jules Gabriel Verne. They wanted a son in law with money. Of course.But Verne went on to find a very good wife far away from his narrow minded hometown of Nantes and they had a long and happy life together in Amiens -- her hometown .. where her family accepted the eccentric Verne with open arms.
Verne of course made millions later on writing such French blockbusters as ...well, you know all his books for sure.
But what most scholars and literary critics do not know is that the French publisher who " discovered" Verne in 1860 and started publishing and editing and collaborating on his series of most likely an assimiliated nonpracticing man from a French Jewish family and he served as both coach and collaborator for Verne, steering his literary career in a savvy pr-infused way and the two men verne the provincial dreamer and hetzel the parisian charmer made literary history together.
Jules Verne's French publisher in 1800s was savvy Jewish intellectual in Paris named Pierre-Jules Hetzel, an assimiliated French Jew with family roots in Germany. Hetzel "discovered" Verne, helped him to put "20 Thousand Leagues Through the Seven Seas" into shipshape shape and order, collaborated with on his future novels and shaped his publishing career in the way only a great publisher can do.
So: Was Hetzel raelly Jewish? "His name suggests a Germanic, possibly Jewish
background; and like many middle-class intellectuals of his time, he
was a republican, a strong supporter of democracy in government," "Kurt Wilcken, a
cartoonist and blogger and
a longtime Verne fan in the USA tells this blog. "And
the mission of his magazine, to educate the young and to popularize
science, reflects a love of learning which has always been a Jewish
tradition. So maybe he was."
Wilcken lives in Wisconsin, "The Enchanted
Land-O-Cheese" as he likes to call it.
"In some ways," he added, " Hetzel was like another magazine editor, Hugo
Gernsbeck, who is considered the father of American science fiction.
Gernsbeck also used adventure fiction as a vehicle for educating his
readers and transmitting scientific ideas."
"I first discovered Jules Verne when I was about eight, through an
edition of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Through the Seven Seas" illustrated by Kurt
Weise. It was the first "grown-up" book I ever read, and it sparked a
love of Verne, Victorian adventure, and steampunk that has lasted my
whole life. I still enjoy embarking on his "Extraordinary Voyages", he told me.
Says another soruce:
''Well, I'm not Jewish myself, but I live for trivia too.''
If you've Googled Hetzel, you probably already know as much about him
as I do, I've read a couple biographies about Verne, long ago, in my
youth, and I remember little of what they said about his publisher.
Most of my more recent research has, like you, come from Wikipedia and
other online sources.''
''You are probably correct that Hetzel may have been Jewish; it does
sound like a Jewish name, or at least a Germanic one.''
''I did a quick look at my copy of "The Annotated Twenty Thousand
Leagues", edited by Walter James Miller, which gives a brief biography
of Verne in its preface. It mentions that Hetzel was a "liberal
democrat" who had recently returned from political exile at the time
he bought Verne's manuscript for "Five Weeks in a Balloon." Miller
says very little else about him, though. It would be an exaggeration
to say that all political liberals were atheists, I think I can safely
say that most atheists in mid-19th Century France were politically
liberal. And being a Jew and an upper-middle-class intellectual would
fit in that picture.''
''I'm afraid that I can't give you a definitive statement that Hetzel
was Jewish, but I think it likely that he was. I wish I could help
you more with that.''
MORE ON THIS SOON....... [text under construction]
NOTES:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Jules_Hetzel
Pierre-Jules Hetzel (January 15, 1814 – March 17, 1886) was a French editor and publisher. He is best known for his extraordinarily lavishly illustrated editions of Jules Verne's novels highly prized by collectors today.
Born in Chartres, Eure-et-Loir, Hetzel studied law in Strasbourg, and founded a publishing company in 1837. He was the publisher of Honoré de Balzac, whose Comédie humaine began to be appear in 1841, and of Victor Hugo and Émile Zola. In 1843, he founded the Nouveau magazine des enfants ("New Children's Magazine"). Hetzel was a well-known republican, and in 1848 he became chief of cabinet for Alphonse de Lamartine (then minister of Foreign Affairs), and afterward for the minister of the Navy. He went into self-imposed exile in Belgium after the coup d'état which ushered in the Second Empire, and there he continued his political and editorial activities, notably by clandestinely publishing Hugo's Les Châtiments, a harsh pamphlet against the Second Empire.
When the political regime was changed in France, he returned home and published Proudhon and Baudelaire. An important edition of the tales by Charles Perrault, illustrated by Gustave Doré, dates from this period. He founded the Bibliothèque illustrée des Familles ("The Family Illustrated Library"), which was renamed to fr:Le Magasin d'éducation et de récréation ("Education and Entertainment Magazine") in 1864. His goal was to have scientists, authors, and illustrators collaborating to create educational works for the whole family.
Hetzel's fame comes mostly for his editions of the Voyages Extraordinaires ("Extraordinary Journeys") by Jules Verne. The stories were originally published in biweekly chapters as a series in his Magasin. Once all chapters of a story were printed there, the story would appear in book form. Typically this happened towards the end of the year so the books could be purchased as Christmas presents for older children. Originally, there were three editions: one economical, without illustrations; another one in small format, with a few illustrations; and a third one in a bigger in-octavo format and richly illustrated. It is the last edition that is now very popular among book collectors.
Hetzel discovered Jules Verne, but scholars still debate to what extent Hetzel "made" Verne, or if it was Verne who "made" Hetzel's publishing career. Each benefited from the other, and their relationship went beyond that of author and publisher.
Hetzel rejected Verne's 1863 manuscript for Paris in the Twentieth Century because he thought it presented a vision of the future that was far too negative and unbelievable for contemporary audiences, though to many present-day scholars the story was remarkably accurate in its predictions. Verne locked the manuscript away and no longer wrote futuristic, dystopian stories. Paris in the Twentieth Century was first published in France in 1994.
Pierre-Jules Hetzel was also an author for the youth, under the pseudonym P.-J. Stahl. He was an atheist.[1] Hetzel died in Monte-Carlo in 1886. After his death, the publishing business was directed by his son, and later purchased by Hachette in 1914.
NOTES: Did Jules Verne have a jewish publisher in 1860?
Much has been written about the illustrative life of french adventure novelist jules verne, from.his early days growing up in the shadow of his stern and strict lawyer father to his teenage romances with young lovelies who stole his heart and then were suddenly ''married off'' to more promising male prospects by other stern and strict fathers who didnt want their daughters to marry the dreamy-eyed Verne...Jules Gabriel Verne. They wanted a son in law with money. Of course.
But Verne went on to find a very good wife far away from his narrow minded hometown of Nantes and they had a long and happy life together in Amiens -- her hometown .. where her family accepted the eccentric Verne with open arms.
Verne of course made millions later on writing such French blockbusters as ...well, you know all his books for sure.
But what most scholars and literary critics do not know is that the French publisher who " discovered" Verne in 1860 and started publishing and editing and collaborating on his series of most likely an assimiliated nonpracticing man from a French Jewish family and he served as both coach and collaborator for Verne, steering his literary career in a savvy pr-infused way and the two men verne the provincial dreamer and hetzel the parisian charmer made literary history together.
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