The Kip Brothers. Jules Verne

      INTRODUCTION

      Les Frères Kip (The Kip Brothers) is one of those rare Jules Verne novels originally published as part of his Voyages extraordinaires that has, until now, never been translated into English.¹ Why? Some Verne scholars have suggested that British and American publishers refused to translate these works for political and ideological reasons, reacting to the growing number of anti-British and anti-American passages in them.² In the case of The Kip Brothers, however, the reason was more likely commercial. Since it did not conform to the Anglo-American stereotype of what a Jules Verne novel should be about (i.e., a Victorian sci-fi tale with intrepid heroes exploring the far-flung corners of the world and beyond, often with the aid of advanced technology), its market potential was probably deemed too low to justify the costs of translating and publishing. Otherwise, these same publishers would have no doubt opted to do what they had done for so many earlier English-language editions of Verne’s works—that is, simply delete or rewrite the offending passages in question.³ It is interesting to note that, even in its original French edition, The Kip Brothers is quite rare. In the words of a contemporary biographer of Verne, it “is among the least likely of all the books in the Verne cycle to be found today, for it was seldom, if ever, reprinted.”⁴

      It is therefore fair to say that The Kip Brothers represents a unique novel in Verne’s oeuvre. Written soon after the death of his brother Paul, it celebrates more than any other the fraternal bonds of brotherhood. As a detective story that foregrounds themes of vision and perception, it resonates with Verne’s own life as he struggled with his progressive loss of eyesight from cataracts. And finally, published during a time when the Dreyfus Affair was deeply perturbing and polarizing French society, it offers a strangely similar story of judicial error and social injustice.

      COMPOSITION AND PUBLISHING HISTORY

      In January 1902, Jules Verne’s new novel The Kip Brothers began to appear in serial format in the popular French periodical Magasin d’Education et de Récréation. Episodes of the story continued to be published throughout 1902, concluding in the December issue of that year.

      The Magasin d’Education et de Récréation was founded on March 20, 1864, by Pierre-Jules Hetzel, with a new issue appearing every two weeks. Quite successful, the journal offered an entertaining blend of fiction and nonfiction, and one of its educational goals was to teach geography and science to middle-class French families. Hetzel himself was arguably one of the most important book publishers in France during the nineteenth century.⁵ And Jules Verne was, for more than fifty years, Hetzel’s star writer. As a rule, most of Jules Verne’s novels were first published as serials in Hetzel’s Magasin d’Education et de Récréation.⁶

      Exactly when Verne wrote The Kip Brothers has been the subject of some debate over the years. Many—including Christian Porcq—have traditionally assumed that it was during 1901,⁷ whereas Olivier Dumas has argued for a much earlier date, 1898.⁸ And the question of whether or not Verne’s son, Michel, had a hand in the composition of this novel (as he did in most of Verne’s posthumous works) has also been raised. To set the record straight, The Kip Brothers is among those last novels of the Voyages extraordinaires to be written wholly by Jules Verne,⁹ and the date of composition was indeed 1898. How can we be sure? In 1892 Verne began to maintain a log in which he recorded the beginning and end dates of composition of each volume (a volume corresponding to a book “part”—The Kip Brothers is, thus, a 2-volume novel). In this log Verne reported the following: “Frères Norik (15 juillet 98—16 9bre), 2e vol. (16 9bre 98—fini 30 Xbre 98).”¹⁰ As a result, we know that he began writing The Kip Brothers (whose first title was The Norik Brothers) on July 15, 1898, finishing the first volume on November 16; he then began the second volume

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