A Journey to the Centre of the Earth

About the book

Professor Hardwigg's discovery of an old message inspires a journey through Iceland towards a volcanic entrance to the Earth. His nephew Harry narrates with considerably less confidence, making practical fears a counterweight to the professor's determination. Their guide Hans supplies another kind of competence as the travellers descend into a world that challenges their expectations of space, time, and living things. The adventure turns scientific curiosity into physical risk through darkness, thirst, uncertain routes, and unexpected discoveries. This edition is the nineteenth-century English rewrite, which changes names and alters material from Verne's novel. Its energetic contrast between scholarly enthusiasm and immediate bodily need gives the journey a comic edge, even as each stage makes returning to familiar surroundings seem a less straightforward possibility.

• Exploration
• Knowledge and risk
• Courage

Why read it

For a subterranean adventure driven by the friction between a professor's certainty and his nephew's understandable fears.

1871 English rewrite · altered names and content