The Best 28 Books by Jules Verne [PDF]

A Voyage in a Balloon was published in 1863, in the unique style of Jules Verne, in which he used his pen masterfully in a genre that would later become known as science fiction.

Dr. Fergusson along with his companions Dick Kennedy and the servant Joe, undertake an aerial journey in a balloon built according to his own design and baptized as: The Victoria; all over Middle East Africa. Where adventures and moments of danger will not cease to stalk them between storms, volcanic explosions and clashes with African tribes.

A Voyage in a balloon reflects in every line Jules Verne’s desire for adventure and admiration for the exploration and voyages undertaken by the English, French and German explorers of the time, without leaving aside the dream of conquering the skies, which so fascinated the author.

It is 1865. On December 1, at thirteen minutes to eleven, not a second before or after, this immense projectile must be launched…..

Inside it will travel three original and picturesque characters, the first three men to go to the Moon. It is a fabulous project that has aroused the interest of the whole world. But it is not an easy task to have everything ready for that date… However, if it is not achieved, they will have to wait eighteen years and eleven days for the Moon to be in the same conditions of proximity to the Earth.

Jules Verne makes the reader participate, in a vivid way, of all the preparations for this truly exciting adventure.

First work of the cycle that Jules Verne himself entitled «The Extraordinary Voyages».

Five Weeks in a Balloon already brings together most of the elements that have made its author an undisputed classic. However, above and beyond the plot that captivates the reader from the first pages, the poetic and symbolic vigor that at times connects them with the main literary currents of the century, in this novel there is an indelible aroma of adventure, of discovery of the exotic and the unknown, of unexplored spaces where surprise is still possible.

One of his most celebrated titles and a classic of the adventure novel.

Journey to the Center of the Earth (Voyage au centre de la Terre) is a novel by Jules Verne, published on November 25, 1864, about the expedition of a professor of mineralogy, his nephew and a guide to the interior of the Earth.

Professor Lidenbrock, who combines his status as a true savant with boundless stubbornness, deciphers an old parchment, patiently making sense of the incomprehensible signs it contains.

Extraordinary dangers of reading!

The deciphering of this text will inevitably drag Lidenbrok himself, his young nephew Axel and the brave hunter Hans Bjelke to the very center of the Earth, populated by antediluvian animals, terrible storms and other unimportant risks.

The Blockade Runners narrates the adventure of James Playfair, a young merchant ship captain, who tries to break, with his fast ship The Delphin, the blockade that weighs on the city of Charleston because of the American Civil War.

His objective is none other than to exchange, in the Confederate city, provisions and munitions for the precious cotton needed by the textile industries of Glasgow. What he did not count on, without a doubt, was that in addition to cotton he would also find love on this trip.

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea is a work narrated in the first person by the French professor Pierre Aronnax, a remarkable biologist who is taken prisoner by Captain Nemo and is led through the oceans aboard the submarine Nautilus, accompanied by his servant Conseil and the Canadian harpooner Ned Land.

The story begins with an expedition aboard a U.S. Navy ship, the Abraham Lincoln, under the command of Admiral Farragut, which intends to hunt down a strange cetacean, with a long, sharp horn on its snout (the animal is later shown to be a narwhal), which had caused damage to several ships.

Throughout the voyage, many secrets are revealed to them and they travel through various places, such as the mythical Atlantis, the Polynesian islands, the Red Sea, the coasts of the Far East, the Mediterranean Sea, etc.

One of Jules Verne’s least known novels, it is nonetheless one of the author’s most interesting and sensitive novels.

Inspired by the Crimean War (1854-1856), it tells the story of a joint expedition between the Russians and the English where 6 astronomers (three on each side) head to southern Africa to study and measure the arc of the meridian that crosses the Kalahari Desert.

Professional differences, as well as cultural differences and nationalistic pride, serve as an entrée to differentiate each of the characters in the play. In which Jules demonstrates an exceptional pen to differentiate each one of them, with unique particularities and behaviors.

This voyage Around the Moon, a continuation of the story entitled From the Earth to the Moon, is Verne’s novel extension that knows how to combine, with the artifice of a vigorous narrator, the moon myths imagined by man since the beginning of mankind with the scientific knowledge of the 19th century.

This mixture, this weaving of fantasy and knowledge, is what constitutes Verne’s original contribution, founding the genre of a science fiction that reality took charge of confirming to a great extent.

With the passing of the 20th century, scientific reality transformed him from an author of unbridled fantasies into a prophet of the technological future.

A scream of horror escaped from all lips. From the condor’s talons hung, swinging an inanimate body: that of Robert Grant. The animal grabbed him by his clothes and swung into the air, less than one hundred and fifty feet above the camp.

This work was published in three parts: South America (1866); Australia (1866) and Pacific Ocean (1867).

From the discovery of a fragmentary message, a quasi-police expedition is organized and a tremendous succession of adventures in the most diverse places. Exoticism, action, enigma and an excellent gallery of characters, among which Harry Grant’s children (Mary and Robert), the intrepid Captain Lord Glenarvan and the singular and amusing geographer and adventurer Jacques Paganell stand out, are some of the attractions that may explain why In Search of the Castaways has become one of Jules Verne’s most famous and widely read works.

The Fur Country is a novel that appeared in installments in the Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation from September 20, 1872 (volume 16, number 186) to December 15, 1873 (volume 18, number 216), and published as a book in two volumes (June 9, 1873 and October 27, 1873) and in a large-format edition on November 13, 1873.

It was at the far end of the Bering Sea, at the last of the Aleutians, Blejinic Island, that the entire staff of Fort Hope had made landfall, after having traveled more than eighteen hundred miles since the dispersal of the ice.

Some fishermen who came to their assistance hospitably welcomed the castaways. Lieutenant Hobson and his people soon got in touch with the English agents on the continent belonging to the Hudson Company.

The phlegmatic and solitary British gentleman Phileas Fogg will abandon his life of scrupulous discipline to fulfill a bet with his colleagues of the Reform Club, in which he will risk half of his fortune by committing himself to circumnavigate the world in only eighty days using the means available in the second half of the 19th century and following the project published in the Morning Chronicle, his daily newspaper.

He will be accompanied by his newly hired French butler, Jean Passepartout and will have to deal not only with delays in the means of transport, but with the persistent pursuit of Detective Fix, who, unaware of the true identity of the gentleman, enlists in the whole adventure pending a warrant for his arrest by the British Crown, in the belief that, before leaving, Fogg stole 55,000 pounds from the Bank of England.

Phileas Fogg had said that «80 days to circumnavigate the world are enough and to spare». And, thanks to traveling in the same direction as the Earth’s rotation, he completed his journey in 79 days despite all the setbacks he encountered.

Richard Shandon and Dr. Clawbonny are invited to board the Avante, a very strong ship sailing north but without knowing its final destination. The chosen crew is excellent, but the captain’s name is not revealed.

After weeks of sailing, the crew begins to have problems and decides to return. It is then discovered that one of the sailors is Captain John Hatteras, which encourages them and they continue on their way.

However, when the ship’s true destination, the North Pole, is revealed, things take a turn and Shandon ends up mutinying with other sailors. This work was published in two parts: «The English at the North Pole» (1866) y «The desert of ice» (1867).

Perhaps Jules Verne’s most ambitious and intriguing novel. This work closes the trilogy on Captain Nemo, begun with In Search of the Castaways and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.

Here Jules Verne’s fascination and hopes in applied science reappear, in this case through the character of the engineer Cyrus Smith, who, along with four other Richmond prisoners, manages to escape certain death in a hot air balloon and arrives at Lincoln Island, apparently deserted, to become a sort of Robinson Crusoe.

A classic that we now recover for lovers of the genre, with the classic illustrations of Ferat in a high quality edition.

The Survivors of the Chancellor is a novel that narrates the fate of the survivors of the shipwreck of the ship called The Chancellor. It is narrated in the form of a diary by J. R. Kazallon, one of the survivors.

When the passengers of the Chancellor discover that their ship is on fire, they are not yet able to imagine the horrors that await them. In the clipped style of a diary, one of the castaways recounts the tortures they suffer on a float lost in the ocean, but, as usual in Verne, there are always characters whose selflessness, innocence and heroism reach unsuspected limits.

A minor work by Verne, but interesting for its usual mastery of adventure.

According to the title supplement included on the title page (Moscow- Irkutsk), the plot of Michael Strogoff narrates the variety of territories, dangers and sufferings that the protagonist must overcome in order to fulfill the mission personally entrusted to him by the tsar: to preserve the unity of the homeland. Such a narration entails the description of the regions and cities that, as a messenger, he had to travel through until he reached his destination.

The fact that the railroad was in full expansion explains that the first part of the journey is made in the best conditions. Once the iron road is finished, in Nizhny Novgorod, the real essence of the novelistic story begins, where the characters have the opportunity to show their faculties and also their feelings and ideas about the most varied aspects.

On the coast of Algiers, French captain Hector Servadac, his aide Ben Zoof and the ground beneath their feet are swept off the face of the Earth after the passage of a comet.

The world around them changes rapidly and, as they begin to explore, they discover that along with them there are other people in this new world and together they decide to form a small colony, consisting of a Russian count, the crew of his yacht, a group of Spaniards, a young Italian woman, a Jewish merchant, a group of British soldiers and the French professor Palmyrin Rosette, who informs them of where they really are.

The travelers find themselves on the surface of the comet Gallia traveling through space.

Engineer James Starr received a letter from a former employee of his, Simon Ford, inviting him to the old Dochart mine in Aberfoyle.

James Starr had mined the area 10 years ago, which he considered empty, but at the same time he received another letter with no return address, threatening him not to return. Starr decided to go to Aberfoyle, where he was met by Harry Ford, Simon’s son, who took him to the mine, where the Ford family lived. The next day they go out to explore the mine, showing Starr that the old mine had a new, much larger shaft.

Soon the mine prospers and creates a subway town, the New Aberfoyle, however the tranquility of the mine is disturbed from time to time by strange occurrences.

The objective is to facilitate access to adventure classics for younger readers (from ten years old). In this sense, the simplicity of the language used, the structure in short chapters, a presentation of the characters, a plot summary in the form of a comic at the beginning of the book and at the end of each chapter stand out.

The Pilgrim was a four hundred ton ship owned by James W. Weldon, a Californian ship owner who owned a fleet. The Pilgrim had been built in San Francisco and was intended for major fishing in the South Seas. The schooner was commanded by Captain Hull, who knew how to navigate very well among the ice that in summer drifted towards the Cape of Good Hope or New Zealand.

Joam Garral has inherited a ranch near Iquitos, in the Upper Amazon, as a consequence of his marriage to the daughter of the previous owner, and in spite of his unknown parentage. His family is well known in Iquitos -Peru- and they have to travel to Belem, which they decide to do by sailing down the Amazon River, taking not only the whole family, but also their servants.

To do so, they use a typical river boat called Jangada. The story will be complicated by a crocodile attack and, later on, by serious problems related to Joam Garral’s own past.

A young man named Godfrey, nephew of a rich American merchant, decides to travel in search of excitement. To his surprise, he is shipwrecked on an apparently virgin island where he will live a multitude of adventures with his dance teacher and friend T. Artelett.

After more than 6 months on the island, their existence becomes unbearable: the island, at first without predators, becomes full of them; the fire of the storms destroys their small hut in the trunk of a tree; food becomes scarce…

When they were already resigned to their terrible end, Godfrey’s uncle appears triumphantly on the island, explaining that everything that had happened there had been arranged by him to satisfy his nephew’s desires without his nephew really being in danger.

Raised in a good Norwegian family, Erik grows up as a normal child, developing a charming personality, superior intelligence and a character worthy of a leader. However, his physical traits always aroused the curiosity of the community’s inhabitants and his schoolmates. Until the day when Dr. Schwaryencrona, by means of the investigation, discovers that he was adopted by his family since he was rescued from the shipwreck of the Cynthia in the middle of the sea when he was a baby.

From that moment on, they decide together to unravel the mystery of his origin and of Cynthia’s shipwreck. An adventure that will take him to step on the cold Siberian ice.

This fantastic work is one of Jules Verne’s best known, but not because of its writing, but because of the controversy surrounding its creation. For a long time, it was attributed to Jules, then legal documents gave Paschal Grousset as the author, who wrote the book using the pseudonym André Laurie. However, recent studies and documents show a joint authorship of both writers.

Ticket No. 9672 (Un Billet de loterie. It was also published in the United States under the title The Lottery Ticket) is a novel that appeared in installments in the Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation from January 1 to November 1, 1886, and as a book on November 4 of the same year.

In the novel, a castaway, presumed dead, sends his girlfriend, by means of a bottle, a lottery ticket for a very important upcoming draw. The ticket will unleash passions, superstitions and greed, before an unbelievable outcome takes place.

This is a surprising Jules Verne, with a very rich, entertaining and fascinating literature, in which there is no lack of adventure or the brilliant way of presenting his characters.

It features an American inventor, Robur, who, before the members of the Weldon Institute in Philadelphia, a society advocating the use of aerostats, advocates the use of heavier-than-air airships.

After being mockingly dismissed, he kidnaps the president, the society’s secretary and their servant, embarking them on the ship he has built to demonstrate to them the efficiency, safety and power of his invention. Described as a ship with numerous masts, a powerful internal machine turned the propellers that crowned them.

A curiosity that soon after (1896-1897) similar «dirigibles» began to be seen all over the United States, and one of them crashed into a windmill in Aurora (Texas) in 1897. We could qualify this as the first “wave” of unidentified flying objects in history.

In the Year 2889 is perhaps one of Verne’s most interesting stories, mixing science fiction, humor, irony and a peculiar and amusing futuristic vision of the role of journalism in the world of the XXIX century.

A very entertaining story for readers of all ages. Jules Verne is undoubtedly one of the fathers of the science fiction genre. He studied law, but he soon turned to literature. He completed his education by deepening his scientific knowledge, which he used in his novels.

This work, loaded with intelligent criticism against the arms race, the lack of judgment of businessmen and the expansionist desire of the political powers of the time, remains valid with the passage of time, showing with the incomparable writing of Jules how a fictional story can become a portrait of modern times.

Although it cannot be considered a continuation of the work From the Earth to the Moon of 1867, it does reunite its characters, some of the companies, locations and references of the famous work mentioned above. With which we could say that with this novel, he closes a literary cycle in which he makes it clear that sometimes the most innocent dreams and ambitions can be blurred by greedy and ill-intentioned minds.

The cold of the North Pole is the ideal setting for this thrilling and intriguing work, where the main characters face the tyrannical and conquering desires of large financial corporations.

Facing the Flag is a novel that narrates the adventures of a scientist who creates a powerful weapon: the Fulgurator, in clear allusion to the atomic bomb.

This novel is a clear exponent of Verne’s mentality regarding weapons, the growing power and militarism of Germany and the role that science can play as a creator of monsters in the figure of a mad scientist who possesses an invention capable of the greatest benefits or the greatest misfortunes.

This work, along with «The Begum’s Fortune», is considered the anticipation of weapons of mass destruction, especially the atomic bomb.

This story published in 1851 tells a love story between two opposing sides. It is set in Lima (Peru) in 1830, which is under Spanish rule.

It tells the story of the Indian Martin Paz, son of the maximum leader of an indigenous insurgent group in Peru, who falls in love with a Spanish lady named Sara, fiancée of a rich mestizo and daughter of a Spanish marquis. All this while his people are preparing a revolt against the white rulers in order to seize power.

After some misfortunes, Martin joins the rebellion, but when he tries to protect Sara from the Indians, his people and even his father turn against him. Through a plot that may remind us of the story of Romeo and Juliet, Jules Verne narrates the conflicts between Spaniards, Indians and mestizos that took place in Peru during the colonial era.

The plot of the novel concerns the strange appearances of a mysterious craft, both as a high-speed ground vehicle and as a ship or even an aircraft, throughout the United States and the unsuccessful efforts of the police to stop it in order to question its inventor and thus learn the means by which it has achieved such a breakthrough.

After several unsuccessful attempts to get closer to the mysterious ship and its secrets, a police inspector, Strock, manages to be abducted by its crew, which turns out to be led by the American engineer Robur.