Verne’s own story is a rousing summation of his optimistic expectation that, through the thoughtful uses of technology and the aid of good fellowship and a friendly dog, the human race could survive just about anything. Ten years later, Verne, now renowned for Around the World in Eighty Days and From the Earth to the Moon, vastly expanded his castaway story as The Mysterious Island-a tale based on real-life Alexander Selkirk (1676–1721), a sailor who joined the South Sea buccaneers and, at his own request, was put ashore on an island in the Pacific off the coast of Chile (in 1704), where he survived alone until 1709, when he was discovered and brought back to Britain. In 1865, a year before he invented the “scientific romance,” Verne’s castaway novel, Uncle Robinson, was rejected by his publisher.
The first of two new unabridged translations of what Roland Barthes called Verne’s “almost perfect” novel, currently only available in its 19th-century incarnation.
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