A Floating City, and The Blockade Runners

"A Floating City and The Blockade Runners" by Jules Verne is a novel written in the mid-19th century. This work explores the journeys and adventures during a sea voyage aboard the "Great Eastern," a colossal steamship designed to carry passengers across the Atlantic. The narrative follows a variety of characters, including travelers, engineers, and sailors, delving into their hopes and interactions as they navigate their way to America. The opening of "A Floating City" sets the stage for the story, beginning with the narrator's arrival in Liverpool in March 1867, preparing for a voyage on the "Great Eastern." The narrator describes the ship as an engineering marvel, likening it to a floating city, and depicts the chaotic and bustling atmosphere on board as preparations for the journey unfold. As passengers, including the narrator's friend Fabian, embark on this remarkable vessel, the text teases early character dynamics and foreshadows underlying tensions, particularly regarding drastic changes that may emerge within the group. This initial segment establishes not only the ship's significant historical context but also hints at personal stories of ambition and heartbreak intertwined with the broader adventure of crossing the Atlantic. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels, always well-researched according to the scientific knowledge then available, are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time.