Valbezen] in his Nouvelles études sur les Anglais en Inde.” Les Anglais et L’Inde by E. de Valbezen (1857) and its enlarged edition Les Anglais et L’Inde (Nouvelles études) (1875) praise especially the introduction of telegraph, canals, railways, and roads: “Britain shows herself truly worthy of the civilizing task that Providence has entrusted to her.”
20. References to books of Verne’s without separate parts are given as (ch. 3), so that any edition can be referred to.
21. Bernhard Krauth, “Le Récif Maria-Thérésa,” BSJV 84 (1987): 32.
22. The German name is in fact “Maria-Theresia.”
23. Krauth, 32. Jean-Paul Faivre reports that map no. 5356 of the (French) Naval Hydrographic Office and the folding map in “Malte-Brun revised by E. Cortambert, vol. 4” (without further reference) both mark “Maria-Thérésa,” apparently 153° W of Greenwich, and that no. 5356 also marks Ernest-Legouvé Reef (“Jules Verne (1828–1905) et le Pacifique,” Journal de la société des océanistes 11 (1965): 135–47 (141)).
24. Gilles de Robien, Jules Verne, le rêveur incompris (2000), 185.
25. Grateful acknowledgments are recorded to Sidney Kravitz for providing many of the ideas in this paragraph. Further implausibilities and mistakes are indicated in the endnotes.
26. The French novelist, Georges Perec, often cites MI, for instance in La Vie mode d’emploi (1978—ch. 8). So do Raymond Roussel, in Comment j’ai écrit certains de mes livres (1935—ch. 2), and Umberto Eco, in Il Pendolo di Foucault (1988—Foucault’s Pendulum—ch. 84) and to a lesser degree in his L’Isola del giorno prima (1994—The Island of the Day Before). Hergé’s L’Etoile mystérieuse (1946) bears many resemblances, not least the final illustration of survivors being rescued from a bare rock and the title which is L’Ile mystérieuse plus “eto” or, written backwards, “ôté” (taken away)! Michel Tournier’s Vendredi, ou les limbes du pacifique (1969) ironically re-interprets the whole genre, including MI. The famous science-fiction author Michel Jeury has written Les Colmateurs (1981) based on a parallel universe consisting of Verne’s MI.
In a different domain, the first edition alone of the game Myst, situated on Verne’s Mysterious Island, sold about two million copies (email dated 17 April 1996 from the publisher, Cyan, to Steven Jones, reported in his “The Book of Myst in the Late Age of Print” (WWW)).
In the July/August 2001 issue of the Atlantic Monthly a short story written by Mark Twain in 1876 was published for the first time. Ch. 8 (pp. 62–64) contains the ironic confessions of a criminal: “At last, in an evil hour, I fell into the hands of a M. Jules Verne, an author … He turned my simple experiences into extravagant and distorted tales … Just as we sailed [into the air] he put into my hands his distortion of my last trip—a book entitled The Mysterious Island! I glanced into it—that was enough. Human nature could stand no more. I hove him out of the balloon!”
NOTE ON PREVIOUS TRANSLATIONS
The only translations of MI in print follow W. H. G. Kingston’s one published by Sampson Low in 1875, also available from many sites on the Internet. Much of this translation is, in my view, above average, for it provides an accurate and readable translation of most of Verne’s text, albeit in nineteenth-century English. What is unacceptable, though, is the way it changes the names (for example, “Harding” for Smith) and deletes some of the passages, such as criticism of British India or the phrase where Pencroff speaks of rewarding his crew with “a quarter liter of wine by watch!” (II, 13). It is unfair, however, to ascribe such censorship to the nationality of the author. After all, the (British and American) publishers are more likely to be guilty, and in any case passages describing the Americans as “illiterate … asses” are still deleted from present-day translations of From the Earth to the Moon (ch. 6), of whatever nationality.
The only other translation to date, Stephen W. White’s of 1876, with a simpler style but also more deletions, has apparently not been reprinted since, although nearly as good as Kingston’s. I. O. Evans’s 1959 Fitzroy and Lowell Bair’s 1970 Bantam editions derive directly from Kingston’s but are severely abridged versions. They thus seem to break the law in passing themselves off as authentic Verne, and have criminally contributed to Verne’s reputation in the English-speaking countries. The prize for ignoring the author’s rights, however, must go to the Bibliothèque verte edition of 1963, which cuts five-sixths of the text.
Further information about previous editions appears below, with the approximate length provided to indicate the degree of abridgement. The French text contains about 199,000 words.1
1. The Mysterious Island [Dropped from the Clouds, The Abandoned, The Secret of the Island] (London: Sampson Low, trans. W. H. G. Kingston, 1875)2 about 195,000 words—notable reprints: (a) New York: Vincent Parke (vols. 5–6), 1911 (b) New York: Scribner, 1918 (c) New York: Signet Classics, 1986.3
2. Mysterious Island (Warburton, 1876 [original printing: Philadelphia: The Evening Telegraph, 1876], trans. Stephen W. White) about 175,000 words.4
3. The Mysterious Island [Dropped from the Clouds, Marooned, Secret of the Island (in 2 vols.)] (1959, Hanison/Associated, Fitzroy Edition, trans. erroneously indicated as I. O. Evans) about 90,000 words.5
4. The Mysterious Island (1970, Bantam, abridged by Lowell Bair, erroneously indicated as trans.) about 90,000 words.6
As the present volume went to print, confirmation was received of the publication of Random House Modern Library of a new translation of MI by Jordan Stump, due to appear in 2002. Although omitting the majority of Verne’s illustrations, the translation itself is excellent. (The opening words are: “‘Are we rising?’ / “‘No! Quite the reverse! We’re sinking!’ / “‘Worse than that, Mr. Cyrus! We’re falling!’ / “‘For the love of God! Drop some ballast!’”) The introduction is, however, superficial, generally ignoring the genesis of MI and the French literary context.
NOTES
1. Most of the information in this section was provided by Arthur B. Evans, to whom grateful thanks are recorded.
2. Apparently reproducing earlier serial publication as follows: The Mysterious Island (1874–75, Sampson Low in St. James Magazine, trans. not indicated) and Mysterious Island (Part I: Wrecked in the Air; “Smith” rather than “Harding,” 1874–75, Scribner in Scribner’s Monthly Magazine, trans. not indicated).
3. The opening words are: “‘Are we going up again?’ / “‘No! On the Contrary—’ / “‘Are we descending?’ / “‘Worse than that, captain! we are falling.’ / “‘For Heaven’s sake heave out the ballast!’”
4. “‘Are we going up again?’ / “‘No. On the contrary; we are going down!’ / “‘Worse that that, Mr. Smith, we are falling!’ / “‘For God’s sake throw over all the ballast!’”
5. “‘Are we rising again?’ / “‘No. On the contrary.’ / “‘Are we descending?’ / “‘Worse than that, captain; we are falling!’ / “‘For heaven’s sake heave out the ballast!’”
6. “‘Are we rising?’ / “‘No, we’re sinking.’ / “‘It’s
