This adventure novel follows a professor, his nephew, and their guide beneath the Earth's surface. Their journey begins inside an Icelandic volcano and leads to a vast underground sea.
255 pages 4h 57m reading time
One of the founding novels of science fiction, and among the best known of Verne's "Extraordinary Voyages" adventure series.
Imagines that the Earth's interior is not solid and burning but hollow in places, holding caves, seas, and living creatures from the deep past.
Builds its fantasy on the real science of its day, using geology and the study of fossils to make an impossible trip feel believable.
Helped create the "lost world" story, in which explorers find prehistoric animals surviving in a hidden place, a type of tale later used in works like Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World."
Has been adapted many times for film, television, and stage, including the well-known 1959 movie "Journey to the Center of the Earth."
Updated after new fossil finds
Three years after it first appeared, Verne added chapters about prehistoric humans, following real discoveries of ancient human bones.
Borrowed from a science book
Its scenes of ancient plants and beasts closely follow Louis Figuier's popular 1863 book about prehistoric Earth.
Real volcanoes as doorways
The explorers climb down into Snaefellsjokull, a real Icelandic volcano, and come back up through Stromboli in Italy.
Written for a family publisher
Verne wrote it for Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who sold his adventure books to young readers and their families.
Jules Verne 1864