The English at the North Pole was originally published in 1864, being begun even before Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. This vigorous Arctic tale was used to found and introduce a "Magazine of Adventure,"which was continued for some years. The book contains an accurate picture of Arctic life and of the Arctic geography known to the world of 1864. The account of the Franklin expedition and of the persistent and heroic search for its relief is carefully studied and complete, only it necessarily fails to include the later investigations of the American expedition under Lieutenant Schwatka. These finally settled the last details of the historic tragedy.

In this book Verne struck again the bolder note of imagination and creation. Here the daring explorers are represented as actually attaining the pole; and the bold inventions of what they saw and did, rising to the startling climax of the volcano and the madman's climb, are led up to through such a well-managed, well-constructed and convincing story, that many critics have selected this in its turn as the most powerful of Verne's works. It is notable that, with the exception of the open sea and the volcano, the world which our author here penetrates in imagination, coincides closely with that which Peary has discovered to exist in reality. Here are the same barren lands, the same weary sledge journey, the same locations of land and sea, the "red snow," the open leads in the ice. Verne's predictions, wild as they sometimes seem, were all so carefully studied that they shoot most close to truth.