Around the Moon – Bayard & Neuville Wood Engraving, Jules Verne 1870s

Dense star-field black ink surrounds two figures locked in an ethereal embrace, their bodies trailing weightlessly through the cosmos as a luminous, crater-pocked Moon replaces one figure's head in a hauntingly surreal composition. This wood engraving from Jules Verne's 'Around the Moon' captures the dreamlike wonder of early speculative fiction — humanity reaching for the celestial, rendered with meticulous cross-hatching that gives the void a velvety, almost tactile depth.