Here we have Doctor Ox, from the Jules Verne novel, "Le Docteur Ox". This is a gentle little tale, about a small town which is totally off the map, but somehow is suddenly seen as being a good place to test a new gas lighting system, designed by the eponymous Doctor. And if you would like to read it, over Christmas, it is online, as part of the Gutenberg project, and available in all kinds of formats for all kinds of computers and e-readers.
I have to say that this is a lovely colourful set, so unlike the early black and white portraits which are more associated with Felix Potin - though, strangely, one of those black and white cards does actually show Jules Verne.
The cards known, so far, from our set are :
- Voyage au Centre de la Terre ["Journey to the Centre of the Earth" - 1864]
- Un Capitaine de 15 ans ["Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen - 1878]
- La Maison a Vapeur ["The Steam House" - 1880]
- 5 semaines en ballon ["Five Weeks in a Balloon" - 1863]
- Keraban le Tetu ["Keraban the Inflexible" - 1883]
- Le chateau des Carpathes ["The Carpathian Castle" - 1892]
- De la Terre a la Lune ["From the Earth to the Moon" - 1865]
- Le Pilote du Danube ["The Danube Pilot" - 1908]
- 20,000 lieues sous les mers ["Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas" - 1869]
- Le Docteur Ox ["Doctor Ox" - 1874]
This is quite a mixture, including some of his most famous works, and others which are probably not even known of by modern readers.
However it seems likely that one of the missing ones is one of his best loved books, "Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jour" [or "Around the World in Eighty Days", written in 1872.]