Captain Nemo’s library (circa 1868) was a room on his submarine, the Nautilus, that contained 12,000 books – at least according to “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1870), a work of fiction by Jules Verne.
As Jules Verne tells it:
“[It had tall bookcases made of] black rosewood inlaid with copper, contained in their deep shelves a vast number of books uniformmly bound. These bookcases followed the contours of the room, leading at the lower end to long couches upholstered in maroon leather and curved to provide maximum comfort. There were light, movable reading stands on which one could rest a book and which could be pulled over or pushed away as one required. In the centre of the room stood an immense table covered with pamphlets and newspapers way out-of-date.”
It doubled as a smoking room and had electric lights – 11 years before Edison invented the light bulb.
Was there enough room for 12,000 books? Yes, given that it was 5 metres on one side and the diameter of the Nautilus went up to 8 metres. But the books would have to go up to at least 4.3 metres (14 feet), so you would need a second level or ladders, as implied in these pictures of his library:
The picture at top of the post looks cooler, but would only hold about 1,000 books the way it is set up.
For comparison, Jefferson’s library, at its height, was about half as big (6,487 volumes):
The Library of Alexandria would be eight times bigger if its books were all bound. But since many if not most were scrolls, it took up way more space than that.
Captain Nemo’s library had “everything worthwhile in history, poetry, fiction, science” – especially science: natural history, mechanics, ballistics, hydrography, meteorology, geography, geology, cartography, etc. But nothing on economics. The books were in all sorts of languages.
Some books and authors, listed by century and year:
-
- -800s: Homer: Odyssey
- -700s:
- -600s:
- -500s:
- -400s:
- -300s: Xenophon
- -200s:
- -100s:
- -000s:
- 000s:
- 100s:
- 200s:
- 300s:
- 400s:
- 500s:
- 600s:
- 700s:
- 800s:
- 900s:
- 1000s:
- 1100s:
- 1200s:
- 1300s:
- 1400s:
- 1500s: Rabelais
- 1600s:
- 1700s:
- 1800s:
- literature: Victor Hugo, George Sand
- science: Louis Agassiz, Athénaïs Michelet, Léon Foucault, Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville, Henri Milne-Edwards, Michel Chasles, Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau, John Tyndall, Faraday, Claude Louis Berthollet, Angelo Secchi, Augustus Heinrich Petermann
- transactions of the Academy of Sciences
- bulletins of geographical societies
- 1842: Charles Darwin: The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs
- 1850 H.C. Sirr, Esq: Ceylon and the Singhalese
- 1853: François Arago: Complete Works
- 1855: Matthew Maury: The Physical Geography of the Sea and Its Meteorology
- 1859: Alexander Humboldt: Complete Works
- Pierre Aronnax: The Mysteries of the Great Submarine Depths
- 1865: Joseph Bertrand: The Founders of Astronomy
- 1868: Nemo: nautical charts
Pierre Aronnax is the fictional narrator of “20,000 Leagues”, not a historical person.
Nemo said of 1865:
“I gave up the world the day my Nautilus plunged beneath the waters for the first time. That day I bought my last books, my last pamphlets, my last newspapers. Since then I wish to believe humanity no longer thinks or writes.”
– Abagond, 2020.
Source: Google Images (2020); The unabridged Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter translation of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1870) by Jules Verne. My abridged version does not say what books he had.
See also:
- books and authors I have done posts on
- libraries of:
- Leah Price: Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books
- What Malcolm X read in prison
- Reading old books
- scroll
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“Bertholet?” Maybe, “Claude Louis Berthollet (9 December 1748 in Talloires, France – 6 November 1822 in Arcueil, France) was a Savoyard-French chemist who became vice president of the French Senate in 1804.[1] He is known for his scientific contributions to theory of chemical equilibria via the mechanism of reverse chemical reactions, and for his contribution to modern chemical nomenclature. On a practical basis, Berthollet was the first to demonstrate the bleaching action of chlorine gas, and was first to develop a solution of sodium hypochlorite as a modern bleaching agent.”
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yes! card key access only of course!
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In the era, these kind of stories were intended as cautionary tales, warnings about the hazards of egocentrism and the flaws in the idea of the superior man. The same idea can be seen in Jack London’s character Wolf Larsen, although his library was a little smaller.
In my M.A. thesis on literary naturalism in the works of Willa Cather. I declare the character Tiny Soderball in “My Antonia” also a representation of the concept of Nietzschean individualism. Like Nemo and Wolf Larsen, she also is pretty darn miserable.
Verne’s creation of Nemo precedes and prefigures Nietzsche, but then there are no really new ideas.
I saw Jefferson’s re-created library in Washington in 2012. Hate to be a boo-bird but a lot of it was used bookstore stuff. Multi-volume histories and the like. My library very seriously rivals his, but mine is in cardboard boxes in a storage locker. The other part of Jefferson’s inconsistency is what concerns me most. He idealized the self-reliant free yeoman farmer but spent his whole life living on a slave plantation.
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@ gro jo
Thank you!
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@ Michael Field
The part of Jefferson’s inconsistency that concerns me most is that he said “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” but spent his whole life living on a slave plantation.
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@ Michael Field
“Hate to be a boo-bird but a lot of it was used bookstore stuff. Multi-volume histories and the like.”
When Jefferson sold his private library to Congress, it consisted of 6,487 volumes, in multiple fields and multiple languages. Curious to know what percentage of that was “used bookstore stuff”
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I should probably also point out that during Jefferson’s lifetime, a book that now would be printed under one cover was often published in multiple volumes, even on the first print run. For example, most novels were broken into three volumes, regardless of length.
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