Showing results by author "William Butcher" in All Categories

First Mate Shandon receives a mysterious letter asking him to construct a reinforced steamship in Liverpool. As he heads out for Melville Bay and the Arctic labyrinth, a crewman reveals himself to be John Hatteras, and his obsession, the North Pole. The captain is later abandoned by his crew and remains without resources at the coldest spot on earth. How can he find food and navigate the Polar Sea? And what will he find at the top of the world?

From the established expert on the subject comes this new biography of one of the world's most successful writers. Breath-taking in scope, and full of the kind of revelations sure to cause press and controversy, Butcher combines existing and new research on Verne's life with the evidence from Verne's works to explore what sort of man Jules Verne was, how he achieved what he did, what went on inside his head, what really made him tick.

In 1861 a struggling playwright from Nantes traveled to the wildest parts of Norway with two friends. The experience transformed him, opening his eyes to exotic adventures—and to a new mode of writing. The sole surviving chapter of his autobiographical work, completed at about the same time as he met his lifelong publisher and surely his most personal piece, brilliantly recounts his reasons for travelling and his preparations in a henceforth “suffocating” Paris. None of his subsequent masterpieces would have been possible without Verne’s Joyous Miseries.