Archiv der Kategorie: Verne, Jules

An Antarctic Mystery – Jules Verne

Hardly ever in literature has any author adopted the plot of another and carried it forward beyond the lines of its creator. Yet this is precisely what Jules Verne has done with Poe’s story called Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, and the two great inventive minds thus unite in forming Verne’s tale entitled An Antarctic Mystery. The author has brought to the telling of his story all the old creative skill, the dashing love of adventure, and a surprising show of knowledge of the flora and fauna and the geography of the Antarctic seas. The hero of the book takes passage from the far-off Kerguelen Islands on the ship Halbrane, whose captain, Len Guy, had been very reluctant to carry him because it was impossible to tell where they might make port. But Mr. Joerling persisted and accomplished his purpose. The captain was an eccentric and silent man, yet when Mr. Joerling informed him that Connecticut was his home he showed a sudden interest. This was because the captain knew of the nearness of Connecticut to the Island of Nantucket, whence Pym and his companions had sailed on their disastrous voyage. It turns out that Len Guy is the brother of Poe’s Captain Guy, and that his sole aim in life is to discover this brother,—lost in the Arctic ice. In fulfilment of the purpose, which had become a monomania, the Halbrane sailed for the Arctic seas, and there adventures were encountered which will astonish and delight every reader, young or old. Indeed, an Antarctic mystery is essentially a book for young people, but, like its predecessor, it will startle the old as well. Read more/Mehr lesen...

The Begum’s Fortune – Jules Verne

Jules Verne’s conceptions are as brilliant as ever. Dr. Sarrasin, a French savant, simple in taste and absorbed in science, delivers an address at the Brighton Scientific Association. The publication of it with his name in ‘ The Daily Telegraph’ discovers him to a London lawyer as the lost heir of the Begum, whom his uncle had married in India. He inherits a moderate property of twenty-one millions sterling, all ready for him in the Bank of England. Dr. Schultz, a German professor, also a connection by marriage, threatens to dispute it. They settle the dispute by dividing it. Dr. Sarrasin founds in the Rocky Mountains a city of health, modelled on Dr. Richardson’s lines. Dr. Schultz founds at thirty miles distance a stupendous cannon manufactory. One piece fires a shot with a velocity and force that give it perpetual motion. He resolves to destroy Dr. Sarrasin’s city. How he fails and perishes by his own science the story must tell ; but it is prodigious. The magnificence and the verisimilitude are perfect. Read more/Mehr lesen...

Journey To The Center Of The Earth – Jules Verne

In the spring of 1863 Professor Lidenbrock finds a secret, runic manuscript, that was written by an Icelandic alchemist hundreds of years before. It tells about a journey to the center of the earth which this alchemist claims to have made. Lidenbrock, his nephew Axel and their guide Hans decide to follow this route into a secret subterranean world … An adventure classic for the past hundred and several hundred more years to come!

Journey To The Center Of The Earth

Format: Paperback.

Journey To The Center Of The Earth.

ISBN: 9783849671969.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

Plot summary of Journey to the Center of the Earth (from Wikipedia):

The story begins in May 1863, in the Lidenbrock house in Hamburg, Germany, with Professor Lidenbrock rushing home to peruse his latest purchase, an original runic manuscript of an Icelandic saga written by Snorri Sturluson (Snorre Tarleson in some versions of the story), “Heimskringla”; the chronicle of the Norwegian kings who ruled over Iceland. While looking through the book, Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel find a coded note written in runic script along with the name of a 16th-century Icelandic alchemist, Arne Saknussemm. (This was a first indication of Verne’s love for cryptography. Coded, cryptic, or incomplete messages as a plot device would continue to appear in many of his works and in each case Verne would go a long way to explain not only the code used but also the mechanisms used to retrieve the original text.) Lidenbrock and Axel transliterate the runic characters into Latin letters, revealing a message written in a seemingly bizarre code. Lidenbrock attempts a decipherment, deducing the message to be a kind of transposition cipher; but his results are as meaningless as the original. Read more/Mehr lesen...

Around The World In Eighty Days – Jules Verne

Phileas Fogg, a respectable English gentleman of phlegmatic temperament and methodical habits, maintains, during a discussion at his club in London, that a man can travel around the world in eighty days; and to prove it, he makes a wager of half his fortune that he can do it himself in that time. The bet is accepted, and he starts the same night, taking his French servant Passepartout with him. He wins his wager, after a series of adventures in which nature, man, accident, and the novelist combine to defeat him, but are all baffled by his unfailing resource, iron will, invincible coolness, and Napoleonic readiness to sacrifice everything else to the one essential point;—everything except humanity, in whose behalf he twice risks defeat, first to save from suttee the beautiful young Hindoo widow Aouda, and second to save Passepartout from murder by a Chinese mob. His virtue is rewarded by success and Aouda.

Around The World In Eighty Days

Format: Paperback.

Around The World In Eighty Days. Read more/Mehr lesen...

20000 Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne

‘20000 Leagues Under the Sea’ was one of the first science fiction novels ever and has been a classic in this genre ever since its publication in 1870. It tells the world-famous story of Captain Nemo and his submarine Nautilus and a journey all around the earth.

20000 Leagues Under the Seas

Format: Paperback.

20000 Leagues Under the Sea.

ISBN: 9783849675899.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

Plot summary of 20000 Leagues Under The Sea (from Wikipedia):

During the year 1866, ships of several nations spot a mysterious sea monster, which some suggest to be a giant narwhal. The United States government assembles an expedition in New York City to find and destroy the monster. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a French marine biologist and narrator of the story, who happens to be in New York at the time, receives a last-minute invitation to join the expedition which he accepts. Canadian whaler and master harpoonist Ned Land and Aronnax’s faithful servant Conseil are also brought aboard. Read more/Mehr lesen...

Mistress Branican – Jules Verne

A book from the pen of Jules Verne is its own best advertisement. Mistress Branican shows no falling off in the author’s imaginative faculties or vivacity. This is the first of bis books in which a woman has been made the central figure. Perhaps the flying trips around the world made by Miss Bisland and ” Nelly Bly”gave him the idea. At any rate, it is a good one. Mistress Branican, however, traveled with a caravan, and not with a small hand-bag. The adventures of this lady on her travels are thrilling and humorous at the same time, and the whole is told with that air of sincerity which is peculiar to the romances of Jules Verne.

Mistress Branican

Format: Paperback.

Mistress Branican.

ISBN: 9783849675905.

Available at amazon.com and other venues.

Biography of Jules Verne (from Wikipedia):

Jules Verne (8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright.

Verne was born to bourgeois parents in the seaport of Nantes, where he was trained to follow in his father’s footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Read more/Mehr lesen...