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Jules Verne's Around the Moon — Bayard & Neuville Underwater Scene, 1870s
A brilliant cone of light from a submarine porthole or vessel illuminates a swirling chaos of deep-sea fish as they scatter in alarm — one grotesque, bulbous-headed creature lingers near the bottom while the dark hull of a submerged craft looms ominously in the murk above. This engraving captures the eerie, pressurized silence of the ocean abyss, a world alien enough to rival outer space in Jules Verne's breathtaking Victorian imagination.
Category: Book Illustration
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Artist: Émile-Antoine Bayard and Henri de Montaut Neuville
Era: Victorian (1837-1900)
Decade: 1870s
Country: France
Coolness: 4/10
This is the real deal — a genuine Hetzel edition engraving from Verne's moon voyage saga, and that searchlight beam cutting through the fish is genuinely atmospheric. Not a screaming pulp cover, but as a Victorian undersea scene it's got elegant tension that predates the whole genre.
