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Introduction and chs 1-3

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Chs 1-3 in revised Folio Society edition

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To sum up all the . . . knowledge amassed by science, and to rewrite the history of the universe.’ Thus Hetzel, Verne’s publisher, ambitiously announced the aims of the series the Extraordinary Journeys in the Known and Unknown Worlds, with which Verne launched his literary career. After Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) came such other masterpieces as The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, and Around the World in Eighty Days.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth has been consistently praised for its style and vision of the world. It explores the prehistory of the globe, but can also be read as a psychological quest, for the journey itself is as important as arrival or discovery. Professor Lidenbrock and Axel travel across Iceland, and then down through an extinct crater towards a sunless sea where they enter a living past and are confronted with the origins of man. A classic of nineteenth-century literature, the novel’s distinctive combination of realism and Romanticism has marked figures as diverse as Sartre and Tournier, Mark Twain and Conan Doyle.

 

 

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

Translation, introduction and critical edition by

William Butcher

OUP 1992

ISBN: 9780192829009

New OUP Edition 2008

ISBN: 9780192836755

Folio Society Edition, with an Introduction by Michael Crichton, 2001

(no ISBN)

 

 

 

Reviews:

'I highly recommend the Oxford World's Classics translation by William Butcher -- he went back to the original French and began again. And his notes are great', The Guardian, 24 July 2014

'the best trans[lation is] William Butcher's' Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

'cracking good read . . . excellent modern translation . . .  thrilling, gripping, and genuinely unputdownable' Vulpes Libris

'William Butcher’s text has an easy, graceful rhythm; it preserves the allusive complexity of the original prose; and the characters make psychological sense in a way that they almost never do in other translations' Michael Crichton

'complete joy  . . . deeply moved by the language  . . . powerful translation  . . . brilliant' Extrapolation

‘the first critical edition . . . complete success . . . precious . . . no comparable French edition exists’ BSJV

'excellent, up-to-date and informed critical introductions, biographical and bibliographical material, and detailed explanatory notes ... which are a mine of information for any scholar. Translations too are excellent', Tim Unwin

'the father of Verne Studies', Writing Magazine

‘superb . . . a true pearl of a book’ Professor Arthur Evans, Extraordinary Voyages

'effective and enjoyable ... lyrical, melodramatic, and mischievously ironic by turns ... the end-notes are extremely useful', Modern Language Review

‘a virtuoso exegete’, French Studies

'The best modern translation... done by one of today's pre-eminent Verne scholars', Robert Silverberg

'marvelous', Zvi Har'El