The nation in a nutshell: A rapid outline of American history

George Makepeace Towle (1841-1893) was an American lawyer, politician, and author. His is best known for his translations of Jules Verne's works, in particular his 1873 translation of Around the World in Eighty Days. He graduated in arts from Yale University in 1861 and in law from the Harvard Law School in 1863, and practised in Boston in 1863-5. He was United States consul at Nantes, France, in 1866-8, and in the latter year was transferred to the consulate at Bradford, England, where he remained until his return to Boston in 1870. Towle became president of the Papyrus club in 1880, and was a delegate to the Republican national convention at Chicago in 1888. In early 1873 Towle started collaborating with the American publisher James R. Osgood on translations of Verne. He continued to translate the Verne novels until the bankruptcy of the firm in 1876. The translations are of a uniformly high quality. His works include: Glimpses of History (1865), The History of Henry the Fifth, King of England (1866), American Society (2 volumes) (1870) and The Nation in a Nutshell: A Rapid Outline of American History (1886).