Joyous Miseries of Three Travellers in Scandinavia


By Jules Verne


Translated with an introduction, notes and


appendices by William Butcher


Read by Patrick Barker


In 1861 a struggling playwright from Nantes travelled to the wildest parts of Norway with two friends. The experience transformed him, opening his eyes to exotic adventures – and to a new mode of writing. The sole surviving chapter of his autobiographical work, completed at about the same time as he met his lifelong publisher and surely his most personal piece, brilliantly recounts his reasons for travelling and his preparations in a henceforth “suffocating” Paris. None of his subsequent masterpieces, but especially Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Captain Hatteras, would have been possible without Verne’s “Joyous Miseries”.


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