Verne Traduced.

From Raymond N. MacKenzie’s LRB review (9 July 2026; archived) of David Coward and William Butcher’s new translation of Jules Verne, Journey to the Moon, some passages about how his publisher and his translators treated him: By the last decades​ of the 19th century, Jules Verne was less a writer than a brand – one carefully cultivated by his publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel – promising a specific mixture of scientific plausibility, adventure and moral instruction. ‘Jules Verne’ told readers roughly what they would get: a journey, maps, technological marvels, diagrams, rational wonder. A Verne book was, arguably, less the expression of a single imagination and more a tissue of scientific discourse and popular pedagogy, garnished with vivid illustrations. From the mid-1860s, Hetzel did not simply publish Verne; he curated him. […] Sometime in 1861 or 1862, Verne met Hetzel, who had published a wide range of authors, including Stendhal and Balzac. A lifelong republican, Hetzel had…