20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (2nd version), Jules Verne [best ereader for epub .txt] 📗

s originally conceived,Verne's Captain Nemo was a Polish nobleman whose entire familyhad been slaughtered by Russian troops. Nemo builds a fabulousfuturistic submarine, the Nautilus, then conducts an underwatercampaign of vengeance against his imperialist oppressor.

But in the 1860s France had to treat the Tsar as an ally,and Verne's publisher Pierre Hetzel pronounced the book unprintable.Verne reworked its political content, devising new nationalities forNemo and his great enemy--information revealed only in a later novel,The Mysterious Island (1875); in the present work Nemo's backgroundremains a dark secret. In all, the novel had a difficult gestation.Verne and Hetzel were in constant conflict and the book wentthrough multiple drafts, struggles reflected in its severalworking titles over the period 1865-69: early on, it was variouslycalled Voyage Under the Waters, Twenty-five Thousand Leagues Underthe Waters, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Waters,and A Thousand Leagues Under the Ocea