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
Jules Verne writer Adam Roberts, in an essay for "The Guardian" titled "Jules Verne deserves a better translation service", commented: "I'd always liked reading Jules Verne and I've read most of his novels; but it wasn't until recently that I really understood I hadn't been reading Jules Verne at all... It's a bizarre situation for a world-famous writer to be in. Indeed, I can't think of a major writer who has been so poorly served by translation." Similarly, the American novelist Michael Crichton observed: Since 1965, a considerable number of more accurate English translations of Verne have appeared. However, the highly criticized