A Journey to the Centre of the Earth was the second of the long series of “extraordinary voyages” that formed the backbone of Jules Verne’s literary output and made him famous. It was one of the boldest of these novels, taking him into a hypothetical realm where he was forced to allow his imagination a freer rein than usual. Verne was careful, however, to take his inspiration from actual scientific discoveries and to populate his imaginary underworld with things that were known to have existed on the surface. Even the twelve-foot-tall humanoid, who now seems rather fanciful, is supported in the text with a mass of evidence intended to license the biblical claim that there once were “giants in the earth.”

Verne was sufficiently carried away by the current of his speculations to land himself with an awkward problem when it came to getting his heroes safely home again. That necessity drove him—not for the last time—to the only kind of rank implausibility that he was ever prepared to entertain, but he was always prepared to make compromises for the sake of a final narrative flourish. He always liked to end his stories with a melodramatic climax.

Although Verne was careful to relate every aspect of his own tale to scientific discoveries, he was aware of the great literary tradition of fantastic voyages, and he took care to acknowledge that fact. The professor discovers the manuscript in a copy of the part-historical, part-mythical Heimskringla, and he does not reject its testimony out of hand when he finds that it is the work of an alchemist. The solving of the cryptogram pays homage to Verne’s favorite writer, Edgar Allan Poe, whose works were still being translated into French by Charles Baudelaire while Verne was writing A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. The determination to stick as closely as possible to the revelations of modern science was, for Verne, an extension rather than a denial of the visionary dimension that he had found in the Icelandic sagas, the exploits of alchemists, and the fantasies of Poe.

Some critics have complained that Verne’s books were not intended to be read solely by children and that it is something of an insult that they were marketed as “boys’ books” in Britain and the United States. It is certainly a pity that most English translations of A Journey to the Centre of the Earth are severely cut, and that some of them insist on translating the leading characters’ names as “Harry” and “Professor Hardwigg,” but it is nevertheless the case that Verne’s use of a young narrator reveals a determined attempt to awaken a sense of wonder in young readers. The text is straightforwardly and unashamedly didactic, but what it attempts to teach is not so much the facts of nineteenth century science as their wondrous implications. The story is a celebration of the sensation of being on the threshold of great discoveries—a sensation that all young adults ought to have, whether or not they are fortunate enough to grow to maturity in an era of expanding horizons.

The text of A Journey to the Centre of the Earth is an account of observations rather than actions. The characters are given ample opportunity to apply their ingenuity—and all three of them have a part to play—but what they do is always secondary to what they see. Few writers would have allowed them to glimpse the giant “shepherd” and then steal quietly away; most would have insisted on a more intimate, and probably more violent, encounter. That was not Verne’s way; he was an imaginative tourist rather than an imaginative colonialist, and he set out to marvel rather than to interfere. There is a kind of reverence for the natural state of affairs in his work, which is conspicuously absent from almost all the fiction that followed where he led. Looking back with the wisdom of hindsight upon the natural and cultural devastation that followed in the wake of actual nineteenth century explorations, young readers may be better able to appreciate and respect that reverence than any previous generation.