Redactor’s Note

The Mysterious Island (Number V013 in the T & M numerical listing of Verne’s works) is a translation of L’Île mystérieuse first published in England by Sampson and Low and in the United States by Scribner and Henry L. Shepard using the same translation of W. H. G. Kingston. English translators often altered their translations to suit current political views of Church and Empire. In the Kingston translation the chapters near the end of the book where Captain Nemo makes his appearance are altered beyond all recognition and all mention of Captain Nemo’s previous life as a “freedom fighter” for Indian independence is removed, in addition to other deletions. The present translation is by the American Stephen W. White. It first appeared in the Evening Telegraph of Philadelphia, PA and was later published as an Evening Telegraph Reprint Book (1876). The present version is prepared from a xerox copy of that book kindly provided by Mr. Sidney Kravitz of Dover, NJ. According to Taves and Michaluk, “Although more faithful than any other translation, this one has never been reprinted.” And so after a lapse of 127 years this translation of The Mysterious Island is now again available to the public.

Since the text was hand set for a newspaper there are many printer’s errors (including upside-down characters). Where obvious these have been corrected, although an attempt has been made to retain the original spelling of words in use at that period. Where there is a doubt, words have been altered so that the spelling is consistent. In other cases, like “trajopan” where the inconsistency is traced to Verne’s original, the spelling is left unaltered. A table of contents based on the chapter headings has been added which also indicates the points at which the French version was divided into three parts. An updated translation by Sidney Kravitz is now available from Wesleyan University Press (2001).

Norman M. Wolcott, 2003

Editor’s note: The original version of this foreword contained a request from Mr. Wolcott, now deceased, to forward corrections to his email address. In lieu of this, please forward corrections to both Project Gutenberg (the original source of this transcription), and to the Standard Ebooks project (the editors of this free corrected ebook edition). Instructions on how to forward corrections to Standard Ebooks are in the colophon at the end of this ebook.