Sartain's Union Magazine [first Appearances of A Voyage in a Balloon and Walden] 1852 Vols. X and XI in One

Philadelphia: John Sartain & Co., 1852. First Edition . Half Morocco and Marbled Paper. Good Plus. 10" x 6.75. [from engravings]. Philadelphia: John Sartain & Co., 1852. Verne translation by Anne T. Wilbur. All eight numbers from volumes X and XI of Sartain's Union Magazine [January through June 1857 comprising Vol X., with July and August of 1852 - after which Sartain's ceased publication - comprising Vol. XI]. Vol. X 516 pp., Vol XI 208 pp., bound as one volume. 10" x 6.75" , half black morocco with marbled paper boards. Personalized plate at center cover, apparently as produced, in the name of Jane A. Warner. Later of the Forbes Library, Northampton, MA., with that organization's bookplate at front pastedown and perforated stamp at title page, other Forbes indication at rear endpapers. Binding is quite scuffed, with corners and spine ends thoroughly affected; hinges starting. Sporadic light foxing throughout, lightly showing a bit at the Verne first appearance in some margins only, not affecting the Thoreau first appearances. Good plus for the volume, Very Good plus or better for the textblock as a whole and the subject entries in particular. In the dying months of Sartain's Union Magazine in 1852, it might have been of some benefit had that publisher been able to look to the future and understand the significance of what was contained in the the May, July and August numbers: The first appearance in English of Jules Verne ["A Voyage in a Balloon"], in May, and the first appearance of any portion of Henry David Thoreau's Walden [two essays, "The Iron Horse" in July and "A Poet Buying a Farm" in August]. Therein the last Sartain's hardbound volume contained seminal appearances of what would become two of the the most significant and most widely reprinted authors in history, in two vastly disparate genres. Sartain's had, with its last gasps, done with these three short and - at the time - inconspicuous pieces exactly what so many periodical publications of its type and era sought to do. This volume contains all eight months; it appears that some, perhaps most, other examples of the hardbound volume did not include the July and August numbers containing Thoreau's essays, although statistics on this point are unavailable to me. "A Voyage in a Balloon" - as "Un Voyage en Balloon" - was Verne's second tale, published originally in France a year earlier. Anne T. Wilbur translated the 7-page story for Sartain's - and even received, in the index, authorship credit, although the story itself is rightly credited. Later to become part of the Doctor Ox aggregations, it was - Taves & Michaluk, V012 - "apparently the first time Verne ever appeared in English." He would have been about twenty-four years old at the time. The two Thoreau essays - respectively three pages and one page in Sartain's dense double-column presentation - were the first taste ever of Walden, which was published in book form two years later, in 1854. Bearing as well the seemingly countless articles, stories, poems and charming engravings which were the stock-in-trade of such publications, this one, particular, dying volume of Sartain's Magazine may be, much more significantly, a peerless confluence of inchoate genius, from two who would thereafter take distinct paths to literary immortality. L5