Doctor Ox's Experiment

By Victor Hugo

"Dr. Ox's Experiment" ("A Fantasy of Dr Ox") is a short story by the French writer and pioneer of science-fiction, Jules Verne, published in 1872. It describes an experiment by one Dr. Ox and his assistant Gedeon Ygene. A prosperous scientist Dr. Ox offers to build a novel gas lighting system to an unusually stuffy Flemish town of Quiquendone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Classics
• Release date: Jan 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781609770730

Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is one of the most well-regarded French writers of the nineteenth century. He was a poet, novelist and dramatist, and he is best remembered in English as the author of Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) (1831) and Les Misérables (1862). Hugo was born in Besançon, and became a pivotal figure of the Romantic movement in France, involved in both literature and politics. He founded the literary magazine Conservateur Littéraire in 1819, aged just seventeen, and turned his hand to writing political verse and drama after the accession to the throne of Louis-Philippe in 1830. His literary output was curtailed following the death of his daughter in 1843, but he began a new novel as an outlet for his grief. Completed many years later, this novel became Hugo's most notable work, Les Misérables.

Reviews for Doctor Ox's Experiment

[elizajane_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Dr. Ox has come to town and is exposing the citizens to massive doses of oxyhydron for the good of scientific research.This is a short novella but I could not bring myself to finish it. I've read Verne's popular works and enjoyed them very much but found this incredibly boring. It is supposed to be a comedy but between the 19th century science discussions and the droning on about opera, I'm not sure which put me to sleep first. The book itself does have merits. My copy is illustrated by William Pene du Bois, who is an exceptional children's illustrator. I actually purchased the book because of the illustrations. There is also an extensive bibliography at the back which details the first English publications of all Verne's work including novels, stories, plays and non-fiction. The bibliography is also illustrated with pictures taken from the original editions.A good book to look at, but I wouldn't advise reading it.