The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz
Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz (1910)

Member Andrew Nash’s website contains all the English variations of this title.

Plot Synopsis:
(courtesy of member Dennis Kytasaari’s - website)
Henri Vidal is traveling to Ragz, Hungary (via the Danube River) to join his brother Marc, who is there and engaged to be married Myra Roderich. Henri learns that Myra’s hand had previously been asked for by Wilhelm Storitz, son of famed alchemist Otto Storitz. Henri is warmly received by the Roderich family and plans get underway for the wedding festivities. At the first event, there is a disruption German hymn “Song of Hatred” is sung from a voice coming from nowhere, a bouquet of flowers is destroyed on its own and the future bride’s wreath seems to fly through the air on its own out of the building. The spurned suitor Wilhelm Storitz is the number one suspect, but no one is able to find him or his servant as they both seem to have vanished into thin air. The wedding ceremony at the town hall goes without problem, the religious ceremony the next day is interrupted by the voice they know is Wilhelm Storitz “Woe to the married couple! . . . Woe! . . .” As a result the bride falls into a coma and the search for Wilhelm Storitz resumes in earnest, but how do you find what appears to be an invisible man?

Review(s)

The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz
Translator & Critical Material: Peter Schulman. Lincoln, NE, Bison Books (Univesity of Nebraska Press), 2011. 240 pages, 0 ill.
Hardcover — ISBN-10: 0803246757, ISBN-13: 978-0803246751
Softcover — ISBN-10: 0803234848, ISBN-13: 978-0803234840

RECOMMENDED (read why below)
Get the hardcover at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.
Get the softcover at Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.
 
There are no known reviews by any of our members of this edition; however, the translation and all critical material is done by one of our members.

The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz
Translator and Introduction: I.O. Evans. Westport, CT, Associated Booksellers, 1963. 190 pages, 0 ill.

NOT RECOMMENDED (read why below)
 
There are no known reviews by any of our members of this edition, but here are some thoughts on it by member Dennis Kytasaari.

Until 2011 this was the only English translation of the story available. The version of the story that I.O. Evans translation is the version that Jules Verne’s son Michel published 5 years after his father’s death. And to help him meet the constraints of the Fitzroy Editions Evan’s cut passages from the text. These cuts don’t ultimately affect the story. The greatest changes to this story are the ones by Michel Verne, such as turning his father’s “poignant and highly original ending to a completely conventional ‘happy ending.’”