Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne 1956 | Heritage Press

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Heritage Press edition), illustrated by Edward A. Wilson, is a breathtaking mid-century interpretation of Jules Verne’s 1870 marine odyssey, distinguished by Wilson’s moody, psychologically charged artwork. This oversize Heritage Press volume showcases the American artist’s many full-color plates and numerous black-and-white chapter headings, which reimagine Captain Nemo’s Nautilus through a film-noir lens—all shadowy steel corridors and eerie bioluminescent seascapes. Wilson’s Nemo emerges as a brooding Byronic figure, his piercing eyes and black beard rendered in inky washes, while the famous giant squid attack becomes a tangle of sinuous tentacles backlit by electric blue depth charges.

This edition features the unabridged Lewis Page Mercier translation, preferred by scholars for its fidelity to Verne’s original French.