The Black-Indies by Jules Verne

Published originally in 1877 as Les Indes noires, this English translation was No. 5 of The Seaside Library series published by George Munro in New York the same year. The novel has also been published in English over the years using various other titles: The Child of the Cavern; or Strange Doings Underground—Black Diamonds—and The Underground City being three examples. The story takes place primarily in a Scottish coal mine and the reader might naturally assume this novel was a precursor for Verne’s more famous science-fiction novel about underground adventures, Journey to the Center of the Earth, but in fact the latter was published first, in 1864, thirteen years before The Black-Indies.

Jules Verne has a legitimate claim to the honorific often applied to him: “the father of science fiction.” A meticulous researcher, the depth of his knowledge is on display here as he shows off his rather extensive breadth of acquired knowledge about coal mines in general, and specifically Scottish coal mines.