Illustrations in From the Earth to the Moon followed by Around the Moon (De la Terre à la Lune suivi de Autour de la Lune)
On loan to The Met
This work of art is currently on loan to the museum.Verne’s novel From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and its sequel Around the Moon (1870) established a new genre of space fiction rooted in technical and scientific fact. In the novels, a spaceship called the Columbiad is launched from a giant cannon in Florida, orbits the moon, and splashes down in the Pacific Ocean. The uncanny similarities between Verne’s fictional itinerary and those of the Apollo missions have been noted by many, including the American astronauts who named Apollo 11’s command module Columbia, after Verne’s spaceship.
Artwork Details
- Title: Illustrations in From the Earth to the Moon followed by Around the Moon (De la Terre à la Lune suivi de Autour de la Lune)
- Illustrator: Emile Bayard (French, La Ferté-sous-Jouarre 1837–1891 Cairo)
- Illustrator: Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville (French, Saint-Omer 1835–1885 Paris)
- Author: Jules Verne (French, Nantes 1828–1905 Amiens)
- Publisher: J. Hetzel et cie
- Engraver: Hildibrand (active 1870–80s)
- Date: 1872
- Medium: Rotogravure
- Dimensions: 11 × 7 1/16 in. (28 × 18 cm)
- Classification: Books
- Credit Line: Houghton Library, Harvard University, Gift of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences New York, 1955 (*FC8 V5946 865dm)
- Curatorial Department: Photographs