20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Jules Verne, born at Nantes, France, in 1828, of legal and seafaring stock, was the author of innumerable adventure stories that combined a vivid imagination with a gift for popularizing science. Although he studied law at Paris, he devoted his life entirely to writing. His most popular stories, besides 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870), include: Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), A Trip to the Moon (1865), Around the World in Eighty Days (1872), and Michael Strogoff (1876). In addition, he was the author of a number of successful plays, as well as a popular history of exploration from Phoenician times to the mid-nineteenth century, The Discovery of the Earth (1878-80). After a long and active career in literature, Jules Verne died at Amiens, France, in 1905.
Walter James Miller—poet, playwright, critic, translator—has authored, co-authored, or edited sixty-four books, scores of scholarly articles, and hundreds of television and radio programs. A Professor of English at New York University, he has won a writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts/Ruttenberg Foundation. His own translation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is published by Naval Institute Press.