There is more to Jules Verne's famous book about traveling into the Earth than I thought! This is what I learned when I went back to the second issue of Amazing Stories and saw the first part serialized there.
The original was published in French in 1864, then re-published in an expanded version in 1867. Then, the first English version was released in 1871, but here's the kicker: that first English version was drastically altered from what a straightforward translation would have been! The character names were changed, which may have been forgivable, but the structure of the story was actually pretty different, too. That "localized" English version was Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
The 1877 version was a more faithful translation by Frederick Amadeus Malleson, and was called Journey into the Interior of the Earth instead. That's the one I'm focusing on here, but all this stuff about different versions was news to me.
Oddly enough, the 1871 version--we may never know who embellished it. There's no name attached to it as far as I could find, other than Verne's. And also oddly enough, it was this embellished version that Amazing Stories decided to serialize in its second, third, and fourth issues.
The embellished version cuts very short the significant buildup that was present in the original French. In the versions I read, the party reaches the top of the mountain that hides a path into the Earth a full twenty-five pages later than the faithful version!
The narrator, Axel in the faithful version, is youthful, energetic, emotional, fickle, and a little dramatic. He reports things frequently in short, matter-of-fact paragraphs but occasionally finds time to really spend some time on describing some amazing vista or object in long, almost poetic paragraphs.
In the embellished version, from what I've read, Harry (as he's called in that version) is far more dreamy, reflective, and flowery. Just go read the first few paragraphs of each version and you'll see what I mean.
This is a fun scientific what-if? story that is a classic in the genre. It combines basic principles of almost-believable science fiction and the classic travel story style that were both extremely popular at the time. It's not satirical or parody like Off on a Comet was at all. It has a consistent, steady pace which moves along at a decent clip. It has a satisfying mixture of action, tension, and exposition.
I compare it favorably to Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, which I read a couple of years ago. Journey is a little more engaging and keeps things moving. The only flaw in Journey is its ending, which is a little bit more truncated than I like, and has some other issues I talk about in the Spoiler Section of the video above.
It is a perfectly fun little tale, and a great example of Verne at his best.
For discussion of spoilers, see the section of the embedded video starting at 12:02 and ending at 33:44.
Grab copies of the books for free from the Gutenberg Project:
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