Amazing Journeys: Five Visionary Classics

Jules Verne

SUNY Press, Jan 13, 2010 - Fiction - 678 pages

New, superbly translated omnibus of five of Jules Verne s most renowned stories: Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, Circling the Moon, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, and Around the World in 80 Days.

Contents

• Going Places with Jules Verne: 1
• Journey to the Center of the Earth: 15
• From the Earth to the Moon: 131
• Circling the Moon: 223
• 20000 Leagues Under the Seas: 319
• Around the World in 80 Days: 539
• Textual Notes: 657
• Recommended Reading: 667

About the author

Jules Verne was born in 1828 into a French lawyering family in the Atlantic coastal city of Nantes. Though his father sent him off to a Paris law school, young Jules had been writing on the side since his early teens, and his pet topics were the theater, travel, and science. Predictably enough, his legal studies led nowhere, so Verne took a day job with a stock brokerage, in his off-hours penning scripts for farces and musical comedies while also publishing short stories and novelettes of scientific exploration and adventure.

His big breakthrough came when he combined his theatrical knack with his scientific bent and in 1863 published an African adventure yarn, Five Weeks in a Balloon. After that and until his death in 1905, Jules Verne was one of the planet s best-loved and best-selling novelists, publishing more than sixty books. Other imaginative favorites by him include The Mysterious Island, Hector Servadac, The Begum s Millions, Master of the World, and The Meteor Hunt. Verne ranks among the five most translated authors in history, along with Mark Twain and the Bible.

Frederick Paul Walter is a scriptwriter, broadcaster, librarian, and amateur paleontologist. A long-standing member of the North American Jules Verne Society, he served as its vice president from 2000 to 2008. Walter has produced many media programs, articles, reviews, and papers on aspects of Jules Verne and has collaborated on translations and scholarly editions of three Verne novels: The Meteor Hunt, The Mighty Orinoco, and a special edition of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas for the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Amazing Journeys: Five Visionary Classics; Excelsior Editions
• Author: Jules Verne
• Translated by: Frederick Paul Walter
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: SUNY Press, 2010
• ISBN: 1438432380, 9781438432380
• Length: 678 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure