Pierre-Jules Hetzel - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Pierre-Jules Hetzel was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

editor and publisher. He is best known for his extraordinarily lavishly illustrated editions of Jules Verne

Jules Verne

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...

's novels highly prized by collectors today. Hetzel was also the principal editor of Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

and other French writers.

Biography

Born in Chartres

Chartres

Chartres is a commune and capital of the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France. It is located southwest of Paris.-Geography:Chartres is built on the left bank of the Eure River, on a hill crowned by its famous cathedral, the spires of which are a landmark in the surrounding country...

, Eure-et-Loir

Eure-et-Loir

Eure-et-Loir is a French department, named after the Eure and Loir rivers.-History:Eure-et-Loir is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790 pursuant to the Act of December 22, 1789...

, Hetzel studied law in Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

, and founded a publishing company in 1837. He was the publisher of Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....

, whose Comédie humaine began to be appear in 1841, and of Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

and Émile Zola

Émile Zola

Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...

. 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

Alphonse de Lamartine

Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...

(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

Second French Empire

The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...

, 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

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...

and Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...

. An important edition of the tales by Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault was a French author who laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. The best known include Le Petit Chaperon rouge , Cendrillon , Le Chat Botté and La Barbe bleue...

, illustrated by Gustave Doré

Gustave Doré

Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.-Biography:...

, dates from this period. He founded the Bibliothèque illustrée des Familles ("The Family Illustrated Library"), which was renamed to 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
Voyages Extraordinaires
Les Voyages Extraordinaires was a publishing title affixed to the novels and non-fictional writings of French author and science fiction pioneer Jules Verne...

("Extraordinary Journeys") by Jules Verne

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, dystopia

Dystopia

A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

n stories. Paris in the Twentieth Century was first published in France

France

in 1994.

Pierre-Jules Hetzel was also an author for the youth, under the pseudonym P.-J. Stahl. He died in Monte-Carlo in 1886. After his death, the publishing business was directed by his son, and later purchased by Hachette

Hachette Livre

-France:*Calmann-Lévy*Deux Coqs d'Or*Disney Hachette Edition*EDICEF*Editions 1*Editions du Chêne**E.P.A*Éditions Dunod*Editions Foucher*Editions Stock*Fayard**Editions Mille et Une Nuits**Editions Mazarine**Pauvert*Gautier-Languereau*Grasset...

in 1914.

External links

Les Cartonages Hetzel (in French). An authoritative site to identify a Jules Verne book.
Pierre-Jules Hetzel and Elisée Reclus
Hetzel and Verne: Collaboration and Conflict

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Biography

See also

External links