Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea of the premiere adventure novels and one of Verne's greatest works, along with "Around the World in Eighty Days" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth". The description of Nemo's ship, the "Nautilus", was considered ahead of its time, as it accurately describes features on submarines, which at the time were very primitive vessels. A model of the French submarine "Plongeur" (launched in 1863) was displayed at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, where it was studied by Jules Verne, who used it as an inspiration for the novel. The title refers to the "distance traveled" while under the sea and
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Washington Square Press. Many of Mercier's changes were addressed in the translator's preface, and most of Verne's text was restored. In the 1960s, Anthony Bonner published a translation of the novel for Bantam Classics. A specially written introduction by Ray Bradbury, comparing Captain Nemo and Captain Ahab of "Moby-Dick", was also included. Many of Mercier's errors were again corrected in a from-the-ground-up re-examination of the sources and an entirely new translation by Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter, published in 1993 by Naval Institute Press in a "completely restored and annotated edition". It was based on Walter's own 1991