Jules Verne Forum

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Correspondence

From: Ian Thompson <Ian.Thompson~at~ges.gla.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 11:06:19 +0100
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

Dear Volker (and anyone else interested in Verne's correspondence),
In your posting of 30th July, you identified the letter I posted (from the Taylorian Institute, Oxford University) as being written to Ernest W. Smith and dated Amiens 31 March 1890. In this letter Verne declines the invitation to write an introduction of the new Revue des Revues journal. We both assumed that this was the original letter. However, I now believe that the undoubted original is held by the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
The copy of the letter is accompanied by the envelope, addressed in Verne's handwriting to Monsieur W. Smith, 1 rue du Bac, Paris. ( Smith was involved in the founding of the Revue des Revues).
The existence of the envelope, and the dating of the postmark (31st March 1890) indicate to me that this is indeed the original letter. A second Verne letter at Austin, also with envelope and dated 4th April 1890, gives his permission for the first letter to be published in the Revue des Revues.
This poses the question as to the provenance of the Taylor Institute letter which is word for word identical with the Austin one. It would seem that it is some sort of facsimile, like the one you consulted in the Bibliotheque Nationale. When I get a better copy of the Austin example I will compare the two in microscopic detail...I only have a faxed example from Austin at the moment.
However my present belief is that the score is Texas-1 Oxford-0 !
Ian.
Received on Tue 03 Oct 2006 - 12:06:31 IST

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