Jules Verne 
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas 

In ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas’, Jules Verne created a character, Captain Nemo, who would continue to haunt the imagination of generations to come in the manner of Homer’s hero, from whom Nemo took his name. In the ‘Odyssey’ (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614), Ulysses calls himself Nemo, or “No one, ” in order to hide his identity from the Cyclops. Verne’s unknown renegade, making war on injustice, has likewise become a myth.



The best known of Verne’s works was also the one that took the longest to find its way into print. It is certain that the author was working on a story tentatively titled “Voyage Under the Waters” in 1865. After his exploration of the air in ‘Five Weeks in a Balloon’ and his ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’, it was logical that Verne would pursue his pedagogical mission by exploring the bottom of the sea.



The novel focuses on a group of scientists embarking on a dangerous voyage in a submarine piloted by the eccentric Captain Nemo in search of a giant monster. As the journey wears on, the crew encounters dangerous life forms, but the biggest threat to their safety may be their increasingly mad captain…



Considered one of the greatest science-fiction novels ever written, ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas’ explores themes of culture, class, grief, and the preservation of the environment. It is considered one of the forerunners of the ecology movement and displays a great respect for the life of the sea.



‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas’ was originally serialized from March 1869 through June 1870 in Pierre-Jules Hetzel’s fortnightly periodical, the
Magasin d’éducation et de récréation.