He anticipated flights into outer space, submarines, helicopters, air conditioning, guided missiles, and motion pictures long before they were developed. Laying a careful scientific foundation for his fantastic adventure stories, he forecast with remarkable accuracy many scientific achievements of the 20th century. JULES VERNE (1828–1905) was the first author to popularize the literary genre of science fiction. This Wesleyan edition features notes, appendices and an introduction by Verne scholar William Butcher, as well as reproductions of the illustrations from the original French edition. A marvelous adventure story, The Mysterious Island is also notable for its modern retelling of the utopian deserted-island myth, with repeated echoes of Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson. At the end, however, it is realized that Captain Nemo, from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, has secretly been helping the settlers. The novel describes their attempts not only to survive but also, with the aid of the scientific and technological know-how, to rebuild their world from the meager resources of the island. The plot depicts a group of men who have become castaways stranded on an island in the Pacific during the American Civil War.

The Mysterious Island was published in 1874, and it is one of Verne's longest novels. Although several editions under the same title are in print, most reproduce a bowdlerized nineteenth-century translation which changes the names of the characters, omits several important scenes, and ideologically censors Verne's original text. First new unabridged translation since 1876 of one of Verne's best-known novelsĪt a time when Verne is making a comeback in the US as a mainstream literary figure, Wesleyan is pleased to publish a new translation of one of his best-known novels, The Mysterious Island.

The mysterious island novel