INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME ONE
IN this volume are included Verne's first masterpiece "Five Weeks in a Balloon", and also all such as his earlier stories as he himself thought worth preserving. These he gathered in later years, and had some of them reissued by his Paris publishers.
"A Drama in the Air", was, as Verne himself tells us, his first published story. It appeared soon after 1850 in a little-known local magazine called the "Musée des Families." The tale, though somewhat amateurish, is very characteristic of the master's later style. In it we can see, as it were the germ of all that was to follow the interest in the new advances of science, the dramatic story, the carefully collected knowledge of the past, the infusion of instruction amid the excitement of the tale.
Similarly we find "A Winter in the Ice" to be a not unworthy predecessor of the "The Adventures of Captain Hatteras" and all the author's other great books of adventure in the frozen world. Here, at the first attempt, a vigorous and impressive story introduces us to the northland, thoroughly understood, accurately described, vividly appreciated and pictured forth in it's terror and mystery.
"The Pearl of Lima" opens the way to all those stories of later novelists wherein some ancient kingly race, some forgotten civilization of Africa or America, reasserts itself in the person of some spectacular descendant, tragically matching its obscure and half-demonic powers against the might of the modern world. "The Mutineers" inaugurates our author's favorite geographical device. It describes a remarkable and little known country by having the characters of the story travel over it on some anxious errand, tracing their progress step by step.
Thus, of these five early tales, "The Watch's Soul" is the only one differing sharply from Verne's later work. It is allegorical, supernatural, depending not upon the scientific marvels of the material world, but upon the direct inter-position of supernal powers.
"Five Weeks in a Balloon," the last and by far the most important story in this volume, is Verne's first complete and accepted masterpiece. This book, published in 1863 without preliminary display, made the author instantly a central 'figure in the literary world. Like Byron he awoke one morning and found himself famous.
Verne told his friends that before writing this book, he had no knowledge whatever of practical ballooning. Indeed the balloon was, to his view, quite a secondary part of the tale. 'Always an omnivorous reader of works of travel, he conceived the idea of writing into one book the descriptions of parts of Africa gathered from the accounts of the great explorers. These men he regarded as heroes of the highest type, worthy of the most distinguished honor; and he sought to honor them.
As he worked over the tale, the possibilities of scientific and even more of dramatic interest to be gained from the balloon, appealed to him more and more. To his friends he confided that he had conceived an idea or rather a combination of ideas by the publication of which he hoped he might achieve real fame.
He was right. "Five Weeks in a Balloon" was unique in the literature of the day. Its success was as immediate and tremendous as it was deserved. The book is painstakingly accurate in its following of the descriptions of the explorers, a truly valuable piece of geographical work. It is almost inspired in its deductions as to the probable character of the unknown land beyond their travels, its descriptions of that mysterious heart of Africa which even yet is largely unexplored. In the handling of the fortunes of the balloon and the balloonists, the elements of drama and suspense, the book is an acknowledged masterpiece.