 Cover page ofThe Mysterious Island | |
| Author | Jules Verne |
|---|---|
| Original title | L'Île mystérieuse |
| Translator |
|
| Illustrator | Jules Férat |
| Language | French |
| Series | |
| Genre | Adventure novel,Science fiction[1] |
| Publisher | Pierre-Jules Hetzel |
Publication date | August 1874 – September 1875 (serial); November 1875 (book) |
| Publication place | France |
Published in English | 1875 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Preceded by | Around the World in Eighty Days |
| Followed by | The Survivors of the Chancellor |
| Text | The Mysterious Island atWikisource |
The Mysterious Island (French:L'Île mystérieuse) is a novel byJules Verne, serialised from August 1874 to September 1875 and then published in book form in November 1875. The first edition, published byHetzel, contains illustrations byJules Férat. The novel is acrossoversequel to Verne's famousTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870) andIn Search of the Castaways (1867–68), though its themes are vastly different from those books. An early draft of the novel, rejected by Verne's publisher and wholly reconceived before publication, was titledShipwrecked Family: Marooned with Uncle Robinson, indicating the influence of the novelsRobinson Crusoe[2] andThe Swiss Family Robinson.[3] Verne developed a similar theme in his novel,Godfrey Morgan (French:L'École des Robinsons, 1882).[4]
The chronology ofThe Mysterious Island is incompatible with that ofTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, which begins in 1866, whileThe Mysterious Island begins during the American Civil War (1861–1865), yet is supposed to happen 16 years afterTwenty Thousand Leagues.
In 1865, during theAmerican Civil War, five Northernprisoners of war escape during theSiege of Richmond, Virginia, by hijacking a hydrogen-filled observation balloon. The escapees areCyrus Smith, arailroadengineer in theUnion army (named Cyrus Harding inKingston's translation); his ex-slave and loyal follower Neb (short forNebuchadnezzar);Bonadventure Pencroff, asailor (who is addressed only by his surname; in Kingston's version, he is named Pencroft); hisprotégé and adopted sonHarbert Brown (called Herbert in some translations); and thejournalistGedéon Spilett (Gideon Spilett in English versions). The company is completed by Cyrus's dog, Top.a
After flying in a great storm for several days, the group crash-lands on a cliff-bound, volcanic,unknown island described as being located at34°57′S150°30′W / 34.950°S 150.500°W /-34.950; -150.500 (SouthernPacific Ocean/Asian:Oceanian side), about 2,500 kilometres (1,600 mi) east ofNew Zealand and about 11,000 kilometres (6,800 mi) fromVirginia. They name it "Lincoln Island" in honor ofAbraham Lincoln. With the knowledge of the brilliant engineer Smith, the five are able to sustain themselves on the island, producing fire, pottery, bricks,nitroglycerin, iron, anelectric telegraph, a cave home inside a stony cliff called "Granite House", and even a seaworthy ship which they name theBonadventure. They start to think of themselves as colonists rather than castaways.
During their stay on the island, the "colonists" endure bad weather and domesticate anorangutan, Jupiter, abbreviated to "Jup" (or "Joop", in Jordan Stump's translation). There is a series of mysterious events on the island, suggestive of some unseendeus ex machina, including Cyrus' survival after falling from the balloon, the mysterious rescue of Top from adugong, the appearance of a box of equipment (guns and ammunition, tools, etc.), and other seemingly inexplicable occurrences.
The group finds amessage in a bottle directing them to rescue acastaway on nearbyTabor Island, who turns out to be none other thanTom Ayrton (fromIn Search of the Castaways). On the return voyage to Lincoln Island, they lose their way in a tempest but are guided back to their course by a mysterious fire beacon.
Ayrton's former pirate companions arrive by chance and try to make Lincoln Island into their lair, initially being mistaken as rescuers by the colonists. After some fighting with the protagonists, the pirates' ship is mysteriously destroyed by an explosion. Six of the pirates who took small sloops to infiltrate the island survive, kidnap Ayrton, and destroy theBonadventure. When the colonists attempt to rescue Ayrton, the pirates shoot Harbert, seriously injuring him. The colonists at first assume Ayrton has been killed, but later find evidence that he was not instantly killed, leaving his fate uncertain. When the colonists rashly attempt to return to Granite House before Harbert fully recovers, Harbert contractsmalaria but is saved thanks to a box ofquinine sulfate which mysteriously appears on the table in Granite House. After Harbert recovers, they again attempt to rescue Ayrton and deal with the pirates. They discover Ayrton alive at the sheepfold; the pirates, however, they find dead, without any visible wounds except a little red spot on each of them.
The island is revealed to beCaptain Nemo's hideout, and home port of theNautilus. Having escaped themaelstrom at the end ofTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, theNautilus had sailed the oceans of the world until all its crew except Nemo died. Now an old man, Nemo returned theNautilus to its secret port within Lincoln Island. Nemo had been the mysterious benefactor of the settlers, planting the torpedo that destroyed the pirate ship and killing the pirates with an "electric gun". On his death bed, Captain Nemo reveals his true identity as the lost Indian prince Dakkar, son of araja of the then-independent territory ofBundelkund and a nephew of the Indian heroTippu-Sahib. After taking part in the failedIndian Rebellion of 1857, Prince Dakkar escaped to adesert island with twenty of his compatriots and commenced the building of theNautilus, adopting the name Captain Nemo. Before he dies, Nemo gives them a box of diamonds and pearls as a keepsake. Nemo's final words are "God and my country!" ("Independence!", in Verne's original manuscript). TheNautilus is scuttled and serves as Captain Nemo's tomb.b
Afterward, the island's central volcano erupts, destroying the island. Jup the orangutan falls into a crack in the ground and dies. The colonists, forewarned of the eruption by Nemo, find shelter on the last remaining piece of the island above sea level. They are rescued by the shipDuncan, which had come to rescue Ayrton but was redirected by a message Nemo had left on Tabor Island. After they return to theUnited States, they form a new colony inIowa, financed by Nemo's gifts, and Ayrton shows Lord Glenarvan and his son that his character has changed.
 | This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(September 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
The 2003 English edition ofWrecked on a Reef (1869), a memoir by French shipwreck survivorFrançois Édouard Raynal, has additional appendices by French scholar Christiane Mortelier who presents a case for the influence of Raynal's book on Verne'sThe Mysterious Island. TheGrafton was wrecked near New Zealand on theAuckland Islands on 3 January 1864, where the crew of five survived for 19 months before obtaining rescue.Wrecked on a Reef, Raynal's memoir of the incident, was very popular at the time of publication, being translated into multiple languages. According to Mortelier, Verne read Raynal's account and loosely based his novel on the true life story ofGrafton shipwreck, survival, privation, and ultimate rescue.
In the United States, the first English printing began inScribner's Monthly in April, 1874, as a serial.[5] In September, 1875, Sampson Low, Marston Low, and Searle published the first British edition ofMysterious Island in three volumes entitledDropped from the Clouds,The Abandoned, andThe Secret of the Island (195,000 words). In November, 1875, Scribner's published the American edition of these volumes from the English plates of Sampson Low. The purported translator,W. H. G. Kingston, was a famous author of boys' adventure and sailing stories who had fallen on hard times in the 1870s due to business failures, and so he hired out to Sampson Low as the translator for these volumes. However, it is now known that the translator ofThe Mysterious Island and his other Verne novels was actually his wife, Agnes Kinloch Kingston, who had studied on the continent in her youth. The Kingston translation changes the names of the hero from "Smith" to "Harding"; "Smith" is a very common name in the UK and would have been associated, at that time, with the lower classes. In addition many technical passages were abridged or omitted and the anti-imperialist sentiments of the dying Captain Nemo were purged so as not to offend English readers. This became the standard translation for more than a century.
In 1876, theStephen W. White translation (175,000 words) appeared first in the columns ofThe Evening Telegraph of Philadelphia and subsequently as an Evening Telegraph Reprint Book. This translation is more faithful to the original story and restores the death scene of Captain Nemo, but there is still condensation and omission of some sections, such as Verne's description of how a sawmill works. In the 20th century, two more abridged translations appeared: the Fitzroy Edition (Associated Booksellers, 1959) abridged by I. O. Evans (90,000 words) andMysterious Island (Bantam, 1970) abridged by Lowell Bair (90,000 words).
Except for the Complete and Unabridged Classics Series CL77 published in 1965 (Airmont Publishing Company, Inc), no other unabridged translations appeared until 2001, when the illustrated version of Sidney Kravitz appeared (Wesleyan University Press) almost simultaneously with the new translation of Jordan Stump published by Random House Modern Library (2001). Kravitz also translatedShipwrecked Family: Marooned With Uncle Robinson, published by the North American Jules Verne Society and BearManor Fiction in 2011.
| This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(September 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
The novel has been translated intoMarathi byB. R. Bhagwat titled 'निर्जन बेटावरचे धाडसी वीर', which roughly translates as "Brave Fighters on a Deserted Island", and has a cult following inMaharashtra. The novel has also been translated toMalayalam, asNigoodadweep, translated by Kesavan Nambisan. There is more than one translation inBengali. The translation by Kuladaranjan Roy is called “আশ্চর্য দ্বীপ” (Aschorjo Dwip) and was republished byKalpabiswa Publications in 2023. Another translation by Shamsuddin Nawab fromSheba Prokashoni, published in 1979, is calledRahosshor Dip.
There is also some significance of an adaptation of Captain Nemo and the Mysterious Island in the first arc of the sixth season ofOnce Upon a Time.
The Mysterious Island public domain audiobook atLibriVox| Periods | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Types of pirate |
| ||||||||
| Areas |
| ||||||||
| Major figures |
| ||||||||
| Pirate ships | |||||||||
| Pirate battles and incidents | 
| ||||||||
| Piracy law | |||||||||
| Slave trade | |||||||||
| Pirates in popular culture |
| ||||||||
| Miscellaneous | |||||||||
| Lists | |||||||||
