Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne1870Read this if you…
- are a scifi nerd who wants an undersea adventure
- want the best Jules Verne novel
Skip this if you…
- aren't a nerd
- want something serious and thought provoking
The 
Take
Fun to see Vernes passion for science bleed through. Does a great job thinking up a lot of great stuff that can happen under the sea. Good read
The lineage through Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea built on it. - Captain Nemo is Edmond Dantès moved underwater — Verne built his brooding, vengeful, self-exiled commander on Dumas's Count - Read *Monte Cristo* first and Nemo's mystery reads as a sequel of temperament: the wronged man with a secret fortune, withdrawn from a world he means to punish - The friendship was real — Verne knew Dumas — and the lineage so plain his editor quietly trimmed the acknowledgment from the manuscript
Depicted in Art
Side-view portrait of the Nautilus cutting through the waves, conning tower rising above the spindle hull.
Alphonse de Neuville, 1870
The Nautilus's grand salon: organ, paintings, display cases of marine specimens, and the great viewing-port onto the deep.
Édouard Riou, 1870
Crew on the open deck of the Nautilus fighting a giant squid with axes and harpoons as its tentacles whip across the planking.
Alphonse de Neuville, 1870
A giant spider-crab specimen drawn from the Nautilus's natural-history collection.
Alphonse de Neuville, 1870
Nemo stands on the upper platform of the surfaced Nautilus taking a sextant reading, his crew at attention behind him.
Alphonse de Neuville, 1870
Nemo and Aronnax watch through the Nautilus's viewing port as a pearl-diver works in the water just outside.
Alphonse de Neuville, 1870
Recommended Editions
William Butcher
Oxford University Press · 2009
The 1873 Mercier Lewis version cut 23% of the text and butchered the science. Butcher's Oxford is the corrective. The real Verne is a sharper, funnier, more scientifically literate writer than the English reputation.
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Notable Quotes
The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.
Screen & Stage
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Film · 1954
Richard Fleischer
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
TV · 1997
Jules Verne
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Film · 1916
Stuart Paton
Posters via The Movie Database (TMDB)
- Jacques Cousteau, French oceanographer and pioneer of SCUBA, 1910–1997: "The men of Calypso resemble … those of Jules Verne's Nautilus — men who have been wounded by life on land."
- Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic explorer, Endurance expedition, 1874–1922: His favourite childhood book — on the 1901 Discovery Expedition he signed his poems 'Nemo,' borrowed from Verne's captain.
- Ray Bradbury, American science-fiction novelist, 1920–2012: "Thinking maddens Ahab… Thinking only half-maddens Nemo; more often enlivens and solves problems for him."
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