Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Novel by Jules Verne, published in 1864 in French as Voyage au centre de la Terre. It is the second book in his popular science-fiction series Voyages extraordinaires (1863-1910).  Otto Lidenbrock, an impetuous German professor of geology, discovers an encoded manuscript in which a 16th-century explorer claims to have found a passageway to the center of the Earth. Otto impulsively prepares a subterranean expedition, enlisting his young nephew Axel and a stoic Icelandic guide, Hans Bjelke. After descending into an extinct volcano in Iceland, the men spend several months in a underground world of luminous rocks, antediluvian forests, and fantastic sea creatures until they ride a volcanic eruption out of Stromboli Island, off the coast of Italy.  --The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature