journey to the center of the earth verne

The snug Old World opening scenes that make such a nice contrast to the wild journey to come. Some of the traits I’m struggling to describe: But, as far as I know, none of these accounts for the particular armchair romance-quality of this book. I know he helped start the travel writing genre. I know some of Verne’s influences: Defoe, Hugo plays, Frankenstein possibly, ETA Hoffmann, Fennimore Cooper. It’s funny that his best book (that I’ve read) concerns his least interesting topic: rocks. And indeed Verne is especially good at the poetry of being immured within walls five miles thick, buried deep under an ocean where at that moment ships may be tossing around in a storm, of the profound silence of this stony tomb. That’s not the main charm here and, for what it’s worth, from my hasty glance through his bio, it seems Verne considered his works “novels of science,” by which he meant a way to bring his interests in the field into the higher realm of art (his publisher had conceived of the Extraordinary Voyages series as a way to make learning more palatable for the readers of his family magazine). But where did it come from? Were there any books like this before? I don’t mean science fiction. The kind of tale Verne tells is so crowd-pleasing I’m surprised the imitations didn’t start immediately. Published in 1864, this novel seems like an outlier when you look at the cluster of fantastic adventures that sprouted decades later. Beware of any new editions (or ebooks that can be updated) of the Baldick translation, since Penguin appears to be letting their hateful sensitivity readers graze on their backlist now. I’ve compared passages in every English version, and despite needless inaccuracies and omissions I think this one is the most faithful. No one has been more butchered in translation than poor Verne for some reason.

My second reading of this “voyage extraordinaire.” I sought out the Baldick translation.

Journey to the center of the earth verne