Pierre-Jules Hetzel
Pierre-Jules Hetzel (Chartres, January 15, 1814 – Monte-Carlo, March 17, 1886) was a French editor and publisher. He is most known for his extraordinarily illustrated publications of Jules Verne's novels, which are highly prized by collectors today. Hetzel was also the principal editor of Victor Hugo.
He studied law in Strasbourg, and founded a publishing company in 1837. He was the editor for Honoré de Balzac, whose Comédie humaine began to be published by him in 1841, for Victor Hugo and for Émile Zola. In 1843, he founded the Nouveau magasin des enfants ("New Children's Shop"). In 1848, Hetzel was a well-known republican, chief of cabinet for Alphonse de Lamartine (then ministre of Foreign Affairs), and afterward for the ministre of the Navy. He expatriated to Belgium after the coup d'État which brought the Second Empire, and continued his political and editiorial activities, notably candestinely publishing Hugo's Les Châtiments (a harsh pamphlet against the Second Empire).
When the political regime was liberalised in France, he returned and published Proudhon and Baudelaire. A very notable edition of the tales by Charles Perrault illustrated by Gustave Doré, dates from this period. He founded the Bibliothèque illustrée des Familles ("Families' illustrated Library"), which was renamed to Magasin d'éducation et de récréation ("Shop for Education and Entertainment") in 1864. His idea was to have scientists, authors and illustrators collaborating to create educative works. In the ambiant positivisme of the time, the position was not an easy one.
His fame comes mostly for his editions of the Voyages extraordinaires ("Extraordinary Travels") by Jules Verne. The texts, published as series and in the Magasin, are made available under three collections for Christmas: one econimical, without illustrations; another one in small format, with few illustrations; and a third one, in a bigger format, richely illustrated, and now very pupolar among collectors.
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 any futuristic, dystopian stories. Paris in the Twentieth Century was not rediscovered until over a century later, and was first published in France in 1994.
Pierre-Jules Hetzel was also an author for the youth, under the pseudonym P.-J. Stahl. After he died, his editions were directed by his son, and later bought by the concurrent Hachette, in 1914.
See Also
For more examples of the pictures featured in the books:
- Captain Nemo
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
- Nautilus
- Most interesting pictures in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
External Links
Les Cartonages Hetzel (in French). An autoritative site to identify a Jules Verne book.