Five Weeks in a Balloon (Cinq semaines en ballon)

The French original (Hetzel, Paris, 1863) is unambiguously the true first — Verne's first novel and the inaugural title of the Voyages Extraordinaires — and the census call is correct. No English-language edition precedes it; every English edition is a translation and is therefore a "first thus" in English rather than the true first, however early. The census's specific attribution of the first US English edition to Appleton in 1869 was NOT confirmed in the sources consulted and should not be relied on as stated. Collectors should also note that the format itself is a point: the 1863 first is the in-18; the celebrated illustrated Hetzel large-format cartonnage issues are later and are not the first edition.