Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) was published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in 1870. A mysterious sea creature has been attacking ships across the world’s oceans. Professor Pierre Aronnax, a French marine biologist, his servant Conseil, and Ned Land, a Canadian harpooner, join an expedition to hunt the creature. When their ship is sunk, they discover that the “creature” is the Nautilus, an advanced submarine commanded by Captain Nemo — a man of immense intellect, vast wealth, and burning hatred for the surface world.
Nemo takes his three captives on a tour of the world’s oceans: the coral forests of the Red Sea, the ruins of Atlantis, the South Pole under the ice cap, the pearl fisheries of Ceylon, a battle with giant squid. The “twenty thousand leagues” of the title refer to the distance traveled, not the depth — approximately 60,000 miles, roughly two and a half times the circumference of the Earth.
Captain Nemo is one of the great figures of world literature: a scientist, engineer, musician, and revolutionary who has built the most advanced vessel on Earth and uses it to wage a private war against an unnamed oppressor nation. (In The Mysterious Island, Verne would reveal Nemo as Prince Dakkar, an Indian nobleman fighting against British colonial rule.) Nemo is simultaneously heroic and terrifying — a liberator who sinks warships, a lover of beauty who presides over mass drowning.
The novel’s technical predictions were remarkably accurate: Verne described electric-powered submarines, scuba diving with compressed air, underwater observation windows, and marine biology research decades before any of these technologies existed in their modern forms.
Collecting Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
First edition in French (Hetzel, Paris, 1871, in book form after serialization): Hetzel’s distinctive cartonnage binding with gilt decorations.
Market values:
- Hetzel first edition (cartonnage), fine: $5,000–$15,000
- Hetzel first edition, very good: $2,000–$5,000
- First English edition (Sampson Low, 1873): $1,000–$4,000
- First US edition (various): $500–$2,000
- Illustrated editions (20th century): $50–$500 depending on illustrator
Hetzel’s cartonnage editions — with their elaborate gilt-stamped pictorial bindings — are among the most visually striking collectible books of the nineteenth century.
People Also Ask
How deep is twenty thousand leagues? Twenty thousand leagues is a measure of distance, not depth — approximately 60,000 miles. The maximum depth reached in the novel is about four leagues (approximately 13 miles), which is deeper than the actual deepest point of the ocean.
Is Captain Nemo a villain? Nemo is morally ambiguous. He is a brilliant scientist and a champion of oppressed peoples, but he also sinks ships and kills their crews. Verne intended him as a tragic figure — a man whose justified rage against injustice has led him to commit injustices of his own.