“The reason Verne is still read by millions today is simply that he was one of the best storytellers
who ever lived.”—Arthur C. Clarke

Journey to the Center of the Earth is a classic 1864 science fiction novel by Jules Verne (published in the original French as Voyage au centre de la Terre). The story involves a professor who leads his nephew and hired guide down a volcano in Iceland to the "center of the Earth". They encounter many adventures, including prehistoric animals and natural hazards, eventually coming to the surface again in southern Italy.

From a scientific point of view, this story has not aged quite as well as other Verne stories, since most of his ideas about what the interior of the Earth contains have since been proven wrong. However, a redeeming point to the story is Verne's own belief, told within the novel from the viewpoint of a character, that the inside of the Earth does indeed differ from that which the characters encounter.

Compared to his previous works, Verne takes a radically different approach to storytelling by making the main character and narrator a 19-year-old boy who relates the events as his own adventures. It is unknown whether this was done under the influence of his publisher Hetzel who wanted to distribute Verne's work as aimed towards shrinking teens.

Download Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

Pdf format, 555kb, published by Pennsylvania State University.

About the Author:

Jules Verne: (born Feb. 8, 1828, Nantes, France — died March 24, 1905, Amiens) French writer. He studied law then worked as a stockbroker while writing plays and stories. The first of his romantic adventures (voyages extraordinaires), Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863), was highly successful. His subsequent voyages — with increasingly fantastic yet carefully conceived scientific wonders that often anticipated 20th-century technological achievements — include A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne's work shaped the entire development of science fiction.

(For more information on Jules Verne, visit Britannica.com).

Verne wrote numerous works, most famous of which are the 54 novels part of the Voyages Extraordinaires. He also wrote short stories, essays, plays, and poems.

Some of his better known works include:

    * Five Weeks in a Balloon (Cinq Semaines en balloon, 1863)
    * Paris in the 20th Century (Paris au XXe Siècle, 1863, not published until 1994)
    * Journey to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au centre de la Terre, 1864)
    * From the Earth to the Moon (De la terre à la lune, 1865)
    * Journeys and Adventures of Captain Hatteras (Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras, 1866)
    * In Search of the Castaways or Captain Grant's Children (Les Enfants du capitaine Grant, 1867-1868)
    * Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, 1870)
    * Around The Moon (Autour de la lune, a sequel to From the Earth to the Moon, 1870)
    * A Floating City (Une ville flottante, 1871)
    * Dr. Ox's Experiment (Une Fantaisie du Docteur Ox, 1872)
    * The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa (Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais, 1872 )
    * The Fur Country (Le Pays des fourrures, 1873)
    * Around the World in Eighty Days (Le Tour du Monde en quatre-vingts jours, 1873)
    * The Survivors of the Chancellor (Le Chancellor, 1875)
    * The Mysterious Island (L'Île mystérieuse, 1875)
    * The Blockade Runners, (1876)
    * Michael Strogoff (Michel Strogoff, 1876)
    * Off On A Comet (Hector Servadac, 1877)
    * The Child of the Cavern, also known as Black Diamonds or The Black Indies (Les Indes noires, 1877)
    * Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen (Un Capitaine de quinze ans, 1878)
    * The Begum's Millions (Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum, 1879)
    * The Steam House (La Maison à vapeur, 1879)
    * Tribulations of a Chinaman in China (Les tribulations d'un chinois en Chine), 1879
    * Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon (La Jangada, 1881)
    * The Green Ray (Le Rayon vert, 1882)
    * The Headstrong Turk (1883)
    * Frritt-Flacc (1884)
    * The Vanished Diamond (L’Étoile du sud, 1884)
    * The Archipelago on Fire (L’Archipel en feu, 1884)
    * Mathias Sandorf (1885)
    * Robur the Conqueror or The Clipper of the Clouds (Robur-le-Conquérant, 1886)
    * Ticket No. "9672" (Un Billet de loterie, 1886 )
    * North Against South (Nord contre Sud, 1887)
    * The Flight to France (Le Chemin de France, 1887)
    * Family Without a Name (Famille-sans-nom, 1888)
    * Two Years' Vacation (Deux Ans de vacances, 1888)
    * Topsy Turvy, (1890)
    * Mistress Branican, (1891)
    * The Castle of the Carpathians (Le Château des Carpathes, 1892)
    * Propeller Island (L’Île à hélice, 1895)
    * The Purchase of the North Pole (Sans dessus dessous, the second sequel to From the Earth to the Moon, 1895)
    * Facing the Flag (Face au drapeau, 1896)
    * Clovis Dardentor (1896)
    * The Sphinx of the Ice Fields or An Antarctic Mystery (Le Sphinx des glaces, a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1897)
    * The Mighty Orinoco (Le Superbe Orénoque, 1898)
    * Second Fatherland (Seconde Patrie, sequel to Johann Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson, 1900; also published in two volumes as Their Island Home and Castaways of the Flag)
    * The Village in the Treetops (Le Village aérien, 1901)
    * The Master of the World (Maître du monde, sequel to Robur the Conqueror, 1904)
    * Invasion of the Sea (L’Invasion de la mer, 1904)
    * A drama in Livonia (Un Drame en Livonie, 1904)
    * The Lighthouse at the End of the World (Le Phare du bout du monde, 1905)
    * The Chase of the Golden Meteor (La Chasse au météore, 1908)
    * The Danube Pilot (Le Pilote du Danube, 1908)
    * The Survivors of the 'Jonathan' (Le Naufrages du Jonathan, 1909)
    * The Eternal Adam (L’Eternel Adam, 1910)

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