Jules Verne is best known for such novels as "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," "Around the World in 80 Days," and "Journey to the Center of the Earth," but he did a great deal of other work as well -- he published two books a year for decades, and left behind an "oeuvre" that approaches vast.

In this novel, published in this edition as "An Antarctic Mystery" but also known as "The Sphinx of the Ice Fields, " Captain Len Guy's brother is on the ship "Jane" when it goes missing, and the Captain must convince the crew of the "Halbrane" to take a long and dangerous trip to Antarctic in hope of finding his brother and any other survivors of the "Jane." But strange as the journey may be, it's nowhere near as strange as what they will find waiting at its end. . . .

During his twilight years, the French author Jules Verne (1828-1905) wrote two original sequels to books that had fired his own youthful imagination but which he felt to be incomplete: Johann Wyss's Swiss Family Robinson and Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Arthur Gordon Pym (1845) was only one of many Poe stories which Verne admired; no other single author had more impact on his writing. Verne acknowledged this debt in his only major piece of literary criticism, a detailed 1864 article entitled Edgard sic] Poe and his work.Poe (1809-1849) was just emerging on the French literary scene in translation as Verne was writing his first plays and short stories. Verne was familiar with a broad range of Poe's works, the well-remembered stories as well as many that are obscure today. What is to be admired in Poe, Verne wrote, are the novelties of his situations, the discussion of little-known facts, the observations of the unhealthy faculties of Mankind, the choice of subject-matter, the ever-strange personality of his characters, their nervous, sickly temperaments, their ways of expressing themselves by bizarre interjections. that grips the credulity of the reader.

Taking advantage of his diplomatic privilege in Japan to travel further and inquire deeper than other foreigners, Swiss envoy Aime Humbert (1819-1900) brought back stories of life under the Tokugawa shogunate in its final years. First published in the journal Le Tour du monde in 1866, his account of Japanese history and daily life was republished as Le Japon illustre in 1870. This 1874 English translation brought readers up to date by including additional chapters on the 1868 revolution and its aftermath. Humbert focused his narrative on the history and culture of four locations: Benten, the foreign settlement at Yokohama; Kyoto, where emperors had resided for centuries; Kamakura, the old centre of political power; and Yeddo, now Tokyo, the new capital of Japan. Featuring almost 200 illustrations taken from Humbert's collection of prints and photographs, this book captures descriptively and pictorially a country on the verge of dramatic political and social change.