The Mysterious Island

The Mysterious Island (originally *L'Île mystérieuse*) was written by Jules Verne and first appeared in serial form between August 1874 and September 1875, with a book edition released in November 1875. The first edition, published by Hetzel, featured illustrations by Jules Férat. The novel serves as a crossover sequel to Verne’s earlier works *Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas* (1870) and *In Search of the Castaways* (1867–68), though its tone and concerns differ considerably from those books. An early draft, rejected by Verne’s publisher and later completely reworked, was titled *Shipwrecked Family: Marooned with Uncle Robinson*, showing the influence of *Robinson Crusoe* and *The Swiss Family Robinson*. Verne returned to a similar theme in his 1882 novel *Godfrey Morgan*. Notably, the timeline of *The Mysterious Island* does not align with that of *Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas*: the latter begins in 1866, while the former starts in 1865, making a 16-year gap impossible, and no such gap is stated in the novel.

The story opens in 1865, during the American Civil War. Five Northern prisoners of war escape from the Siege of Richmond, Virginia, by stealing a hydrogen-filled observation balloon. The group consists of Cyrus Smith, a Union army railroad engineer (called Cyrus Harding in one English translation); his former slave and loyal follower Neb (short for Nebuchadnezzar); the sailor Bonadventure Pencroff (addressed only by his surname, and named Pencroft in another translation); his protégé and adopted son Harbert Brown (Herbert in some versions); and the journalist Gedéon Spilett (Gideon Spilett in English editions). Cyrus’s dog, Top, completes the company.

After days of flying through a severe storm, they crash-land on an unknown volcanic island, described as being at 34°57′S 150°30′W in the Southern Pacific Ocean, roughly 2,500 kilometers east of New Zealand and about 11,000 kilometers from Virginia. They name it Lincoln Island in honor of Abraham Lincoln. Thanks to the engineer Smith’s knowledge, the five manage to sustain themselves, producing fire, pottery, bricks, nitroglycerin, iron, an electric telegraph, a cave home inside a cliff called Granite House, and even a seaworthy ship they name the *Bonadventure*. They come to see themselves as colonists rather than castaways.