“From the Earth to the Moon” translation question

[Tad Davis]

I’m trying to track down the translation used for an audio version of From the Earth to the Moon for an article I’m working up. 

It doesn’t quite match any translation I’ve been able to find in print. What it does match is the Gutenberg text titled The Moon Voyage and credited as being “produced by Norm Wolcott, Gregory Margo and PG Distributed Proofreaders.” It’s similar to but not identical to the Mercier translation. The first two paragraphs are as follows:

During the Federal war in the United States a new and very influential club was established in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. It is well known with what energy the military instinct was developed amongst that nation of shipowners, shopkeepers, and mechanics. Mere tradesmen jumped their counters to become extempore captains, colonels, and generals without having passed the Military School at West Point; they soon rivalled their colleagues of the old continent, and, like them, gained victories by dint of lavishing bullets, millions, and men.

During the Federal war in the United States a new and very influential club was established in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. It is well known with what energy the military instinct was developed amongst that nation of shipowners, shopkeepers, and mechanics. Mere tradesmen jumped their counters to become extempore captains, colonels, and generals without having passed the Military School at West Point; they soon rivalled their colleagues of the old continent, and, like them, gained victories by dint of lavishing bullets, millions, and men.

The Gutenberg credits don’t specifically credit Wolcott with the translation; the wording suggests only the transcription. But Wolcott did sometimes revise and transcribe, and I wonder if that was the case here.

Tad Davis

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Tad Davis

tad.dav...@gmail.com

[Alex Kirstukas]

That’s the anonymous 1877 translation from Ward, Lock and Co., which is listed but gets no symbol (so “either of mediocre or unknown quality”) in Art Evans’s 2005 bibliography. 

The Gutenberg text is probably a close transcription of a printed edition, because that’s what Distributed Proofreaders specializes in - crowdsourcing exact textual digitizations of print editions. I’m guessing that Norm donated an edition from his collection to them, and that this was during the period when he focused on getting as many Verne translations onto Project Gutenberg as possible for archival purposes, even when the texts were low quality.

To the best of my knowledge, his editorial changes on Gutenberg were strictly limited to short introductory notes warning the reader of particularly odd translational quirks (e.g. in the “Hardwigg” version of Journey to the Center of the Earth) - he saved his experiments in revision for his own website and self publishing projects. 

On Jan 17, 2026, at 5:18 PM, Tad Davis <tad.dav...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Tad Davis]

I missed that one, thanks. Looking at the first sentence or two listed in Art’s bibliography, there is one difference: “a new and influential club” is “a new and very influential club.” At least it’s not the Mercier translation. 

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Tad Davis

tad.dav...@gmail.com

On Jan 17, 2026, at 1:55 PM, Alex Kirstukas <alex.ki...@gmail.com> wrote:



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