Editing Captain Nemo (section)

== Chronological discrepancies ==

''[[Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas]]'' was first published in 1870 and reports the activities of the ''Nautilus'' over the years 1866 to 1868. ''The Mysterious Island'' was published in 1875 but is set in the years after the close of the [[American Civil War]], i.e., 1865 to 1869. Described as an elderly man in his late sixties, Captain Nemo claims in its pages to have conducted his undersea travels some sixteen years earlier than the dates given in the prior novel.

It is true that the first French hardcover issue of ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' (an octavo edition published in 1871 by [[Pierre-Jules Hetzel]]) contains minor errors that may have been perpetrated by its printers or even by Hetzel himself—who, at times, seems to have made edits without querying Verne. However the chronological discrepancies between this book and ''[[The Mysterious Island]]'' appear to have been present since its publication. They may have arisen from Hetzel's insistence that Verne drastically revise his original concept for the latter novel, in which, some scholars speculate, he had not initially planned to include Captain Nemo at all.