Many a publisher will choose it, rather than an accurate new translation, because it is much cheaper to get into print. The flawed version is in the public domain, so The worst part of the crime is that it's difficult to rectify today. From this volume I learned that the original English translator, Mercier Lewis, cut a quarter of Verne's text, leaving the English-speaking world with a weak, flawed version of the novel, destined to be considered merely a work of juvenile fiction. I'd started reading a nicely bound classic version before stumbling onto The Annotated Jules Verne - Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Walter James Miller in a used bookstore. S eeing the 1916 silent film in the mid 90s rekindled my interest in this book.
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