Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Annotated .

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was not intended to be a novel; Verne wrote in serialized form for the periodical Magasin d'Education et de Recreation, over an eighteen month period that began in March 1869. The serial was so well received that publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel decided to publish them as a book.The story is futuristic and almost science-fiction in nature, following the undersea journey of Captain Nemo, an abrasive and possibly slightly insane submarine captain whose submarine, the Nautilus, is initially mistaken for a large and threatening sea monster by explorers who set out to capture it. On finding out that the monster they are seeking is actually a machine, they join Nemo for a while, marveling at the magical world that exists underwater, but all the while feeling intensely uncomfortable and threatened by the volatile Captain. It was astonishingly well acclaimed on its publication, and this acclaim has not dimmed despite the novel's age.Verne had taken a scientific approach to writing the novel, basing the Nautilus on a model of the French submarine Plongeur (the Diver) that he had seen at the Paris World's Fair in 1867. As well as creating a fascinating hero in Nemo, Verne also included several characters who were based on real-life ocean explorers, in much the same way that he inserted several real-life adventurers in his Around The World In Eighty Days. A successful author, Verne seemed constantly to yearn for a life more adventurous than that of a writer, and his work shows a clear admiration for those who had harnessed their adventurous side and undertaken their individual voyages of discovery.