Overview

Casting a visionary eye over the eighteenth century, Jules Vernes traces navigation to the first astronomers and cartographers in this history of early expeditions. Assessing the influence of Captain Cook and his predecessors in the first part of the book, he introduces the reader to the remarkable efforts of French navigators across the globe.

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9780715630860

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Having abandoned law for literature, Jules Verne enjoyed enormous success during his lifetime, his novels combining adventure, fantasy and popular science to create a new literary genre. Written in a realistic style which made them readily accessible to 19th-century readers, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea have, of course, become classics. After these novels came the publication in 1880 of this work of non-fiction, in which Verne outlines the work of astronomers and cartographers before going on to recount the voyages of various European navigators, such as Alexander Selkirk (the Scottish castaway upon whom Daniel Defoe based Robinson Crusoe), Captain Cook and de Bougainville to all parts of the globe, from the delightfully named Pernicious Islands to the Arctic. Verne clearly researched his subject with considerable thoroughness, reading numerous first-hand narratives written by captains, midshipmen and naturalists in order to assemble detailed accounts of the explorers' climactic, navigational and health hazards, and their discoveries of flora and fauna. The manners, customs and costumes (if any) of native inhabitants are invariably elaborately described, as are the grisly demises often suffered by the explorers at the hands of cannabalistic locals. Illustrated with black-and-white maps and engravings of navigators and natives, locations and animals, the book provides a wealth of historical information as well conveying the sense of adventure enjoyed by the explorers. (Kirkus UK)

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Jules Verne (1828-1905) was a French novelist whose science fiction writings, such as Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, have retained a lasting interest and were turned into major Hollywood films.

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