Early Stories of Jules Verne

This volume includes all of Verne's earlier stories as he himself thought worth preserving. These he gathered in later years, and had some of them reissued by his Paris publishers."A Drama in the Air, " was, as Verne himself tells us, his first published story. It appeared soon after 1850 in a little-known local magazine called the "Musie des Families." The tale, though somewhat amateurish, is very characteristic of the master's later style. In it we can see, as it were, the germ of all that was to follow, the interest in the new advances of science, the dramatic story, the carefully collected knowledge of the past, the infusion of instruction amid the excitement of the tale.Similarly we find "A Winter in the Ice" to be a not unworthy predecessor of The Adventures of Captain Hatteras and all the author's other great books of adventure in the frozen world. Here, at the first attempt, a vigorous and impressive story introduces us to the northland, thoroughly understood, accurately described, vividly appreciated and pictured forth in its terror and its mystery."Th