[4] In his 1893 autobiography, Glances Back Through Seventy Years, he admits it was an elaborate hoax, having never left London and wrote the book in just a few short weeks.

In 1887, they launched the Mermaid Series of reprints of English Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration drama,[6] and in 1888 he was prosecuted for obscene libel for publishing the translation of Zola's La Terre (The Soil), and was fined £100.

[2][3][7] In 1893 he wrote a volume of autobiographical reminiscence called Glances Back through Seventy Years, a graphic picture of literary Bohemia in Paris and London between 1840 and 1870.

The Wines of the World Characterized & Classed: with some particulars respecting the beers of Europe was published in 1875 and Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines Collected During Numerous Visits to the Champagne and Other Viticultural Districts of France, and the Principal Remaining Wine-Producing Countries of Europe was published in 1879.

[10] He had four sons by his first wife,[11] notably Ernest Alfred Vizetelly (1853–1922) who edited and had republished some of the Zola translations previously published by his father.

By his second wife, Elizabeth Anne Ansell, he had a daughter and a son, Frank Horace Vizetelly (1864–1938), who was a lexicographer, etymologist and editor.