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Who is Henry Vizetelly?

Henry Richard Vizetelly (1820-1894) was an adventurous man of the world, wine aficionado, artist, journalist, nonfiction author, and London publisher of popular periodicals and books. He had worked out of Paris years before George Moore arrived there in the 1870s. His European perspective and boldness in business resonated with the young, embattled novelist.

dba Vizetelly & Company since 1880, he joined George Moore’s resistance to the prevailing subscription business model of three-volume novels. The one-volume, inexpensive titles he published for Moore (with years they launched) are A Modem Lover (1885) with minor editorial changes to William Tinsley’s defunct three-volume first edition (1883); A Mummer’s Wife (1885); Literature at Nurse (1885) attacking leading British booksellers; A Drama in Muslin (1886); A Mere Accident (1887); Spring Days (1888).

As a London publisher of Émile Zola in translation, Vizetelly launched Nana (1884) with Moore’s unsigned introduction entitled “The Author of Nana”; Piping Hot (1885) with Moore’s signed Preface; and The Rush for the Spoil (1886) with Moore’s signed Preface.

A translation of The Rush for the Spoil (Paris: C. Marpon & E. Flammarion, n.d.) is a clone of Vizetelly’s edition; it contains Moore’s signed Preface.

All three unsigned translations may be by George Moore.

Vizetelly’s continuing publications of Zola led in 1888-1889 to fines and a prison sentence, and to bankruptcy in 1890.