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# Works of Jules Verne/Introduction to Volume 5

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME FIVE
FTER the publication of "In Search of the Castaways," Jules Verne may be said to have entered on the second period of his fame. The tale was made the basis of a successful spectacular play, one of the first of those huge scenic panoramas built for the eye rather than for the ear.
While this could add nothing to the literary standing of its author, it placed his name in everybody's mouth. His next book, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," and indeed whatever following books lent themselves to the purpose, were staged with similar splendor. The name of Verne became a household word throughout the world, implying wonder and magnificence.
"Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea" was published in 1870. It is the most widely known of all our author's works, perhaps deservedly so. To the mystery of its back-ground, the tremendously impressive appeal of the weird scenery of the ocean's deeps, it added a story, somber, terrifying, stern as some ancient tragedy of Euripides.
Of Verne's works in general it has been said, with some justice, that his stories overshadow his characters, that the latter are but automatons of little interest for themselves, unrealised as human beings, mere pegs existing only to hang adventures on. But surely from this criticism we must except, along with some few others, Captain Nemo. This tragic central figure of "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea" is known to every boy among Verne's readers as a distinct personality, ingenious, inventive, strong and tender, dreaming softly over his organ, praying as a father over the graves of his men in their solemn cemetery under seas, yet grimly unrelenting in his oath of vengeance.
The construction of Captain Nemo's submarine, as has ​been often pointed out, follows strict mechanical facts. In 1870, when the book was published, such a structure was almost inconceivable except to a man of Verne's genius for imaginative construction. The building of a "Nautilus," still, after more than forty years, lies among the things unachieved, but it is no longer regarded as among things unachievable. Every year of experimentation with our own imperfect submarines brings us nearer to Verne's splendid ideal.
And the under-seas world through which Captain Nemo guides his astounded guests! What a wealth of knowledge our author pours out upon it! How fully, how widely did he know this terrestrial globe! Verne's own voluminous reading of books of travel became more manifest with each new book he published. Each work of his contained the assimilated and enlivened treasure of a mass of others. His favorite reading during these years, as he himself tells us, was the justly celebrated geographical magazine of France, "Le Tour du Monde." He familiarized himself with its every volume from cover to cover. He distilled its heart into his work.
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# Works of Jules Verne/Introduction to Volume 2

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INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME TWO
AVING won the attention of the public with "Five Weeks in a Balloon," Jules Verne wrote in rapid succession several truly masterly tales. Of these remarkable inventions of the human mind, "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" was the first to be completed in its present form. It was published in 1864, in a series of books by Verne, denominated "Voyages Extraordinaires." This series, started in that year by the publisher Hetzel, has been continued to the present time.
This particular "Voyage" has sometimes been declared our author's masterpiece. In it he for the first time gives free rein to that bold yet scientifically exact imagination whereby he has constructed for us in fancy the entire universe. There is nothing in all the daring visions of this tale which even to-day our scientists would declare impossible. The interior of the earth is still unknown; and there may well be rifts, passages, descending from extinct volcanoes and penetrating far within. There may well be huge cavities, bubbles left in the cooling mass, vast enough to harbor inland seas, and shelter many of the ancient forms of life now extinct upon earth's surface.
The main scientific objection to this, as indeed to most of the more fanciful of Verne's tales, lies in the extravagant means he employs to bring his explorers home again from their reckless ventures. But, as romance obviously demands their return somehow, science discreetly accepts in silence the astonishing accidents and coincidences whereby they escape the doom they have invited.
The other narrative included in the present volume, the first book of "The Adventures of Captain Hatteras," was also published by Hetzel in 1864, being begun even before ​the "Journey to the Center of the Earth" This vigorous Arctic tale was used to found and introduce a "Magazine of Adventure" which has been continued somewhat irregularly ever since. After the adventures, trials and triumphs of Captain Hatter as had been completed in another tale, the two were revised and republished; and they are here given in their later form.
The first book, "The English at the North Pole," contains an accurate picture of Arctic life and of the Arctic geography known to the world of 1864. The account of the Franklin expedition and of the persistent and heroic search for its relief is carefully studied and complete, only it necessarily fails to include the later investigations of the American expedition under Lieutenant Schwatka. These finally settled the last details of the historic tragedy.
In "The English at the North Pole" as in "Five Weeks in a Balloon" Verne invents little. Here, despite the misleading title, the characters do not penetrate beyond known bounds; and their experiences are just such as our author had read in his careful study of the books of the polar explorers. But these adventures are here made intense and living, and are woven by the born story-teller into a thrilling tale.
# Works of Jules Verne/Introduction to Volume 3

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME THREE
HE Adventures of Captain Hatteras," made popular by the first half, or book, of the tale, were continued and concluded in the "Magazine of Adventure" by "The Desert of Ice." It is in this second book of Captain Hatteras that Verne struck again the bolder note of imagination and creation. Here the daring explorers are represented as actually attaining the pole; and the bold inventions of what they saw and did, rising to the startling climax of the volcano and the madman's climb, are led up to through such a well-managed, well-constructed and convincing story, that many critics have selected this in its turn as the most powerful of Verne's works.
It is notable that, with the exception of the open sea and the volcano, the world which our author here pentrates in imagination, coincides closely with that which Peary has discovered to exist in reality. Here are the same barren lands, the same weary sledge journey, the same locations of land and sea, the "red snow," the open leads in the ice. Verne's predictions, wild as they sometimes seem, were all so carefully studied that they shoot most close to truth.
"The Desert of Ice" was followed by the two other remarkable tales contained in the present volume, "A Trip from the Earth to the Moon," and "A Tour of the Moon." These, though published as separate volumes in 1865, really constitute a single story. They are thus like the two books of Captain Hatteras, examples of that peculiar system of nomenclature which makes the titles of our author's books so confusing and misleading. It became quite the publisher's custom, especially among Verne's earlier books, to issue a first volume, wholly incomplete, under one name, then a second section or volume of the tale under another ​name; and then to reissue the two, or maybe three, combined under a new and entirely different title.
"A Trip from the Earth to the Moon in 97 hours, 13 minutes and 20 seconds," to give the first book of the story its full length original name, plays even more boldly with science than did the "Journey to the Center of the Earth." Yet the theories back of the great gun which shoots the adventurers into space, are sound. And what a vivid realisation is given of the meaning of these vast astronomical distances and forces. Says one of our leading scientific periodicals, speaking of this book, "The time at which the projectile was to be shot out of the cannon is correctly fixed on true astronomical grounds, and the reader who follows its flight will have a more concrete idea of and interest in what gravitation is and does than from half a dozen text-books."
As to the discoveries made by the explorers in the second book of the tale, it is noteworthy that here Verne has again restrained himself, instead of plunging blindly into inventions as a less conscientious romancer might easily have done. His picture of the moon is hard and cold, confined to just what astronomers actually know or closely surmise. He brings the views and visions of the scientist into a field usually abandoned to the fooleries of extravaganza.
# Works of Jules Verne/Introduction to Volume 8

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INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME EIGHT
HE SURVIVORS OF THE CHANCELLOR" was issued in 1875. Shipwrecks occur in other of Verne's tales; but this is his only story devoted wholly to such a disaster. In it the author has gathered all the tragedy, the mystery, and the suffering possible to the sea. All the various forms of disaster, all the possibilities of horror, the depths of shame and agony, are heaped upon these unhappy voyagers. The accumulation is mathematically complete and emotionally unforgetable. The tale has well been called the "imperishable epic of shipwreck."
The idea of the book is said to have originated in the celebrated French painting by Gericault, "the Wreck of the Medusa," now in the Louvre gallery. The Medusa was a French frigate wrecked off the coast of Africa in 1816. Some of the survivors, escaping on a raft, were rescued by a passing ship after many days of torture. Verne, however, seems also to have drawn upon the terrifying experiences of the British ship Sarah Sands in 1857, her story being fresh in the public mind at the time he wrote. The Sarah Sands caught fire off the African coast while on a voyage to India carrying British troops. There was gunpowder aboard liable to blow up at any moment. Some of it did indeed explode, tearing a huge hole in the vessel's side. A storm added to the terror, and the waters entering the breach caused by the explosion, combated with the fire. After ten days of desperate struggle, the charred and sinking vessel reached a port.
The extreme length of life which Verne allows his people in their starving, thirsting condition is proven possible by medical science and recent "fasting" experiments. The dramatic climax of the tale wherein the castaways find fresh ​water in the ocean is based upon a fact, one of those odd geographical facts of which the author made such frequent, skillful and instructive use.
"Michael Strogoff" which, through its use as a stage play, has become one of the best known books of all the world, was first published in 1876. Its vivid, powerful story has made it a favorite with every red-blooded reader. Its two well-drawn female characters, the courageous heroine, and the stern, endurant, yearning mother, show how well Verne could depict the tenderer sex when he so willed. Though usually the rapid movement and adventure of his stories leave women in subordinate parts.
As to the picture drawn in "Michael Strogoff" of Russia and Siberia, it is at once instructive and sympathetic. The horrors are not blinked at, yet neither is Russian patriotism ignored. The loyalty of some of the Siberian exiles to their mother country is a side of life there which is too often ignored by writers who dwell only on the darker view.
The Czar, in our author's hands, becomes the hero figure to the erection of which French "hero worship" is ever prone. The sarcasms thrown occasionally at the British newspaper correspondent of the story, show the changing attitude of Verne toward England, and reflect the French spirit of his day.
# Works of Jules Verne/Introduction to Volume 6

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME SIX
HE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND" is a sequel or conclusion to "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea." "Dropped from the Clouds," the first portion of the celebrated tale, appeared in 1870. But it was not until 1875 that the story was finished by the completion of its other two books "The Abandoned" and "The Secret of the Island."
Thus, long before the books were ended, it is probable that every French reader knew that Captain Nemo was the mysterious protector of the American colonists of the story. For Verne himself made no secret to his friends of the very open "mystery."
It was worth noting that in these books Verne for the first time treats American characters with sympathy and appreciation. In his choice of heroes he was always thoroughly cosmopolitan. He early declared that his own countrymen were too excitable to be used as the central figures of adventure tales. At first he selected Englishmen; because, as he said, "their independence and self-possession in moments of sudden trial make them admirable heroes." To their other national traits he gave little attention, Captain Hatteras for instance being anything but a typical Englishman.
When, in the "Trip to the Moon" Verne for the first time shifted his ground and made Americans the central figures, this was but a natural echo of the European feeling of the moment. Europe was filled with amazement over the marvelous inventions by which during the years 1861 to 1865, American engineers, both North and South, had "transformed the navies of the world." A stupendous invention was to be the heart of Verne's book; naturally the inventors would be American.
Those first Americans of our author's creation were, how- ​ever, monstrosities, the typical Americans of French imagination in the year 1865, drawn by the author absolutely without personal knowledge to guide him.
But the warm reception of Verne's books in America, stimulated his sympathetic interest in our land. In 1867 he journeyed hither, and as a consequence the Americans of his later books approach more closely to being human. Moreover his youthful admiration of Englishmen was somewhat waning. Scotchmen, resentful and even bitter against their sister kingdom, hold the center of the field in "In Search of the Castaways." Captain Nemo glorifies a yet bitterer foe to England, an East Indian Prince of the great "mutiny."
Hence when in "The Mysterious Island" Verne was again looking for inventiveness and ingenuity, he made all five of his central characters American. Moreover he discriminated them clearly and handled them with appreciation. The sailor Pencraft, to be sure, would scarcely be recognized as an American type; and Cyrus Harding is so completely a walking cyclopaedia rather than a man that one almost wonders if Captain Nemo's secret gift to the colonists of a second cyclopaedia was not meant in sarcasm rather than in kindness. Yet here and in "The Survivors of the Chancellor" we certainly touch high water mark in our author's estimate of the American race.
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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Apostolius, Michael

See also Michael Apostolius on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​APOSTOLIUS, MICHAEL (d. c. 1480), a Greek theologian and rhetorician of the 15th century. When, in 1453, the Turks conquered Constantinople, his native city, he fled to Italy, and there obtained the protection of Cardinal Bessarion. But engaging in the great dispute that then raged between the upholders of Aristotle and Plato, his zeal for the latter led him to speak so contemptuously of the more popular philosopher and of his defender, Theodorus Gaza, that he fell under the severe displeasure of his patron. He afterwards retired to Crete, where he earned a scanty living by teaching and by copying manuscripts. Many of his copies are still to be found in the libraries of Europe. One of them, the Icones of Philostratus at Bologna, bears the inscription: “The king of the poor of this world has written this book for his living.” Apostolius died about 1480, leaving two sons, Aristobulus Apostolius and Arsenius. The latter became bishop of Malvasia (Monemvasia) in the Morea.
Of his numerous works a few have been printed: Παροιμίαι (Basel, 1538), now exceedingly rare; a collection of proverbs in Greek, of which a fuller edition appeared at Leiden, “Curante Heinsio,” in 1619; “Oratio Panegyrica ad Fredericum III.” in Freher’s Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, vol. ii. (Frankfort, 1624); Georgii Gemisthi Plethonis et Mich. Apostolii Orationes funebres duae in quibus de Immortalitate Animae exponitur (Leipzig, 1793); and a work against the Latin Church and the council of Florence in Le Moine’s Varia Sacra.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Apparel

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​APPAREL (from O. Fr. aparail, aparailler, mod. appareil, from Low Lat. adpariculare, to make fit or equal), equipment, outfit, things furnished for the proper performance of anything, now chiefly used of dress. The word is also applied to the “orphreys,” i.e. embroidered strips or borders, on ecclesiastical vestments.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Apotactites

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​APOTACTITES, or Apotactici (from Gr. ἀποτακτός, set apart), a sect of early Christians, who renounced all their worldly possessions. (See Apostolici ad init.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Apostrophe

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​APOSTROPHE (Gr. ἀποστροφή, turning away; the final e being sounded), the name given to an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and addresses some one directly in the vocative. The same word (representing, through the French, the Greek ἀπόστροφος προσῳδία, the accent of elision) means also the sign (’) for the omission of a letter or letters, e.g. in “don’t.” In physiology, “apostrophe” is used more precisely in connexion with its literal meaning of “turning away,” e.g. for movement away from the light, in the case of the accumulation of chlorophyll-corpuscles on the cells of leaves.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amort, Eusebius

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​AMORT, EUSEBIUS (1692–1775), German Catholic theologian, was born at Bibermühle, near Tölz, in Upper Bavaria, on the 15th of November 1692. He studied at Munich, and at an early age joined the Canons Regular at Polling, where, shortly after his ordination in 1717, he taught theology and philosophy. In 1733 he went to Rome as theologian to Cardinal Niccolo Maria Lercari (d. 1757). He returned to Polling in 1735 and devoted the rest of his life to the revival of learning in Bavaria. He died at Polling on the 5th of February 1775. Amort, who had the reputation of being the most learned man of his age, was a voluminous writer on every conceivable subject, from poetry to astronomy, from dogmatic theology to mysticism. His best known works are: a manual of theology in 4 vols., Theologia ​eclectica, moralis et scholastica (Augsburg, 1752; revised by Benedict XIV. for the 1753 edition published at Bologna); a defence of Catholic doctrine, entitled Demonstratio critica religionis Catholicae (Augsburg, 1751); a work on indulgences, which has often been criticized by Protestant writers, De Origine, Progressu, Valore, et Fructu Indulgentiorum (Augsburg, 1735); a treatise on mysticism, De Revelationibus et Visionibus, &c. (2 vols., 1744); and the astronomical work Nova philosophiae planetarum et artis criticae systemata (Nuremberg, 1723), The list of his other works, including his three erudite contributions to the question of authorship of the Imitatio Christi, will be found in C. Toussaint’s scholarly article in A. Vacant’s Dict. de théologie (1900, cols. 1115–1117).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amory, Thomas

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​AMORY, THOMAS (c. 1691–1788), British author, was born about 1691, his father being the secretary for the forfeited estates in Ireland. He was an eccentric character and seems to have lived a very secluded life. He published Memoirs; containing the lives of several Ladies of Great Britain; a History of Antiquities &c. (1755) and Life of John Buncle Esq. (1756 and 1766). Both books are an extraordinary mixture of fiction, autobiography, scenic description and theological discussion. Amory died on the 25th of November 1788.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amoy

See also Xiamen on Wikipedia; Amoy in the 9th Edition; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​AMOY, a city and treaty-port in the province of Fuh-kien, China, situated on the slope of a hill, on the south coast of a small and barren island named Hiamen, in 24° 28′ N. and 118° 10′ E. It is a large and exceedingly dirty place, about 9 m. in circumference, and is divided into two portions, an inner and an outer town, which are separated from each other by a ridge of hills, on which a citadel of considerable strength has been built. Each of these divisions of the city possesses a large and commodious harbour, that of the inner town, or city proper, being protected by strong fortifications. There are dry-docks and an excellent anchorage. Amoy may be regarded as the port of the inland city of Chang-chow, with which it has river communication, and its trade, both foreign and coastwise, is extensive and valuable. The chief articles imported are sugar, rice, raw cotton and opium, as well as cotton cloths, iron goods and other European manufactures. The chief exports are tea, porcelain and paper. The trade carried on by means of Chinese junks is said to be large, and the native merchants are considered to be among the wealthiest and most enterprising in China. By other vessels the trade in 1870 was:—imports, £1,915,427; exports, £1,440,000. In 1904 the figures were:—imports, £2,081,494; exports, £384,494. The falling off of exports is due to the decreased demand for China tea, for which Amoy was one of the chief centres. The native population is now estimated at 300,000, and the foreign residents number about 280. A large part of the trade is that carried on with the neighbouring Japanese island of Formosa. The province of Fuh-kien is claimed by the Japanese as their particular sphere of influence. Amoy was captured by the British in 1841, after a determined resistance, and is one of the five ports that were opened to British commerce by the treaty of 1842; it is now open to the ships of all nations.