What were the first eBooks posted in French? They were six novels by Stendhal and two novels by Jules Verne, all released in early 1997. The six novels by Stendhal were: L'Abbesse de Castro, Les Cenci, La Chartreuse de Parme, La Duchesse de Palliano, Le Rouge et le Noir and Vittoria Accoramboni. The two novels by Jules Verne were: De la terre à la lune and Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours. In early 1997, whereas Project Gutenberg offered no English version of any of Stendhal's writings (yet), three of Jules Verne's novels were available in English: 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (original title: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers), posted in September 1994; Around the World in 80 Days (original title: Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours), posted in January 1994 and From the Earth to the Moon(original title: De la terre à la lune), posted in September 1993. Stendhal and Jules Verne were followed by Edmond Rostand with Cyrano de Bergerac, posted in March 1998.
In late 1999, the "Top 20" --the 20 most downloaded authors-- included Jules Verne at 11 and Emile Zola at 16. They still have a very good ranking in the present "Top 100".
As a side remark, the first "images" ever made available by Project Gutenberg were French Cave Paintings, posted in April 1995, with an XHTML version posted in November 2000. This eBook contains four photos of paleolithic paintings found in a grotto located in Ardèche, a region of south-eastern France. These photos, which are copyrighted, were made available to Project Gutenberg thanks to Jean Clottes, a French general curator for cultural heritage (conservateur général du patrimoine), for everyone to enjoy them.
Multilingualism is now one of the priorities of Project Gutenberg, like internationalization. In early 2004, Michael Hart went off to Europe, with stops in Paris, Brussels and Belgrade. He gave a lecture on February 12, 2004 at UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) headquarters in Paris. He chaired a discussion at the French National Assembly on February 13. The following week, he addressed the European Parliament, in Brussels. He also met with the team of Project Rastko, in Belgrade, to support the creation of Distributed Proofreaders Europe (launched in January 2004) and Project Gutenberg Europe (conceived at the same time, and launched in June 2005).