A story under guarantee
In London in September 1898, The Wide World Magazine begins publishing the adventures Louis de Rougemont says he lived through during thirty years in Australia. The magazine presents de Rougemont as the narrator; William G. Fitz-Gerald, the editor who later signs the 1899 book’s preface, explains that a shorthand writer recorded his story. By putting its judgment behind the account, the editorial staff places its own credibility at stake.
The magazine’s introduction calls the narrative perfectly accurate and of great scientific value. It says that well-known experts are satisfied and that the editors have checked every minute detail. Those assurances come from the magazine: the page prints no direct statement by the experts it invokes.
The details are spectacular: straw grown with blood, a six-hundred-pound turtle ridden astride, trained pelicans, four horsemen and a dying man called Gibson. They all belong to the published narrative. Their presence on the page establishes what de Rougemont tells, not that those events happened.
The question therefore concerns the making of editorial certainty as much as the adventures themselves. In September the magazine guarantees the story; a few months later it no longer agrees to present it as a true narrative. Between those positions lies the checking the editorial staff said it had performed.
Clipped summary of Fitz-Gerald's preface, The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (1899), pp. ix–x, 55, 62–63, 285 and 304, and the Wide World Magazine introductions, vol. I, p. 451, then vol. II, p. 227. B01–B05, B07, B10 and W01–W02 were read on renders from the hashed PDFs. Claims remain attributed; no illustration is reproduced.