> Skip to content
  • Published: 7 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9780141441979
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $21.00

Journey to the Centre of the Earth




Jules Verne's pioneering science fiction classic tells the story of the distinguished but eccentric Professor Lidenbrock, who finds a scrap of parchment in an old manuscript. A cipher written in runes, it tells of an entrance to another world – a world hidden beneath our own.

Jules Verne's wild and riotous fantasy Journey to the Centre of the Earth delves into the hidden mysteries of a vast, uncharted subterranean world. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the French by Frank Wynne with an introduction by Jane Smiley and notes by Peter Cogman.

Jules Verne's pioneering science fiction classic tells the story of the distinguished but eccentric Professor Lidenbrock, who finds a scrap of parchment in an old manuscript. A cipher written in runes, it tells of an entrance to another world - a world hidden beneath our own, illuminated by an electrified gas and populated by strange, prehistoric beings. So with his nephew reluctantly in tow, the Professor follows this cryptic clue down into a dormant volcano in Iceland, and the further they descend, the more extraordinary the discoveries and creatures that they encounter, the greater the dangers, and the more ancient the living past that surrounds them.

This new translation by Frank Wynne is accompanied by an introduction on the science of Verne's work and its influences. This edition also includes notes, a chronology and suggested further reading.


If you enjoyed Journey to the Centre of the Earth you might like H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, also available in Penguin Classics.

  • Published: 7 September 2009
  • ISBN: 9780141441979
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $21.00

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Jules Verne

Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828, in the city of Nantes, France . He is best known for his novels A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Mysterious Island and Around the World in Eighty Days. Verne is often referred to as the 'Father of science fiction' because he wrote about space, air and underwater travel before aeroplanes, spacecrafts and submarines were invented. He died in 1905.

Jules Verne (1828 - 1905) lived and died in France but developed an early passion for travel. When he was eleven years old he tried, unsuccessfully, to run away to sea. He returned home and promised his mother that in future he would imagine travelling - this proved to be a prophetic remark.
In the early 1860s, a magazine manager liked one of his adventure stories and gave him a contract to write similar stories for the next twenty years! The collected stories became known as Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires. His stories were of fantastic adventures with a degree of realism in the descriptions of events and scientific content - he was a pioneer of science fiction. He did lots of research for his books but occasionally made up a scientific 'fact' if it suited the story. History has shown that he had an incredible sense of what was possible - his imagined inventions have often turned out to be close to later real inventions.
His most famous story, Around the World in Eighty Days, is more realistic than much of his work as it's set in a real rather than a possible world. The story was based on the travels of an eccentric man from Boston, called George Frances Tain, who set out to do exactly what the title suggested. The books famous hero, Phileas Fogg, was named after a travel writer of the time, William Parry Fogg. The hilarious adventures of Phileas Fogg and his servant Paspartout, owe everything to Verne's imagination. The book is still popular and sales were boosted at the end of the twentieth century when Michael Palin undertook the journey using only the transport that would have been available to Fogg - he was accompanied by a team of TV cameramen!
Jules Verne suffered much pain in later life from a leg wound caused when a nephew went mad and shot him. He died of old age, the author of such classics as A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Also by Jules Verne

See all