A Floating City

A floating city is a novel by French author Jules Verne on a cruise.

The novel was first published on August 9 and September 6, 1870 in the Journal of the Débats under the French title Une ville flottante. Publication in book form was made on July 17, 1871 under the title Une ville flottante along with the short story The blockade - breaker ( Forceurs de blocus ) published by Pierre -Jules Hetzel in Paris. The first German -language edition was published in 1875 under the title A floating city.

Background

In this novel with autobiographical features of the tech-savvy Jules Verne describes the crossing on the built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Great Eastern in the United States, which he has so actually occur in the spring of 1867 with his brother Paul Verne as a passenger. Since the crossing happened nothing exciting, Verne adorned from his experiences.

He used, among other incidents and mishaps that are alleged to have occurred on board the ship as a result of not yet fully mature technology. The Great Eastern had a length of 211 meters and overwhelmed by her until that time unprecedented size of the builder and the operator. Verne describes a number of less serious incidents, which he knew only from stories. Nevertheless Verne in the novel shows his enthusiasm for the ship. He sees it as a triumph of the human spirit. His reportage similar description has supplemented by a small dramatic love story Verne.

Only the descriptions of the maritime environment and the trip to Niagara Falls are fully compliant with the lived reality of it. The Niagara Falls has visited with his brother Jules Verne also in reality. They navigated the Hudson River with a steamboat to Albany to get from there take the train to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Their natural spectacle inspired him so much that he used it as a venue, among other things in his books Robur the Conqueror and The Family without a name.