Once upon a time, eccentric German scientist Otto Lidenbrock comes across a mysterious Icelandic parchment which claims that the centre of the Earth can be reached from a volcano near Reykjavik. The professor, his nephew and their guide duly descend into the Snæfellsjökull volcano and discover an incredible other world: giant mushrooms, living dinosaurs, a subterranean ocean, violent hurricanes, giant prehistoric men and countless other fantastical inventions from the imagination of author Jules Verne.

Journey to the centre of the Earth is widely considered one of the very first science-fiction novels. First published in French in 1864, the book was an instant hit and was soon translated into English, German, Italian and many more languages…

Do the covers to Jules Verne’s classic do its incredible imagination justice? We’ll find out shortly as we begin our exploration of the most eye-catching and interesting covers for Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Ready? It’s time to buckle up and begin our descent into Snæfellsjökull volcano!

The first covers of Journey to the Centre of the Earth

On this blog, we’ve often lamented the lacklustre creativity of 19th century book covers. Many first editions of the world’s greatest works are bound in drab monotone covers, and these editions can look decidedly unappealing to 21st-century readers.

But the works of Jules Verne are a notable exception, perhaps because of the amazing adventures found within. Indeed, the covers to the first editions of Journey to the Centre of the Earth are far livelier than those adorning other books published at the time.

For example, the cover for the first British edition, published in 1872, is an elegant red affair featuring golden type and evocative prints that depict the characters as they explore the bowels of the Earth.

The first American edition, published by Scribner, New York, in 1874, has an attractive green cloth-bound cover with a gilded scroll in the centre. The 1904 French edition released by Heztel – Jules Verne’s original publisher – is equally easy on the eye and offers glimpses of the adventures inside. This double volume bundles together Journey to the Centre of the Earth with Five Weeks in a Balloon, the first novel in which Verne successfully blended the ingredients that would make him famous: science, adventure and exploration.

Covers illustrated by Édouard Riou

From its very first edition, Journey to the Centre of the Earth was accompanied by the illustrations of Édouard Riou, the French artist who illustrated Jules Verne’s early novels, including Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Édouard Riou’s evocative images – think dark caverns, giant mushrooms and dinosaur battles – would become forever associated with Verne’s novel. They are found on the title page of the first French edition, as well as the covers of countless editions published from the 19th century to today.

The best vintage covers for Journey to the Centre of the Earth

If there’s an era when covers most enthusiastically and explicitly depicted Jules Verne’s fantastical worlds, it’s the 1950s and 1960s. In this period, there was an explosion in sales of science-fiction classics, especially in the United States. Thanks to a slew of cheap paperback editions, kids and teens the all over the world could now get their hands on books that transported them to other dimensions.

Pop colours, baseball caps, futuristic technology – here’s our selection of the best vintage covers of Journey to the Centre of the Earth that we could dig up!

Below is the cover for the 1965 edition from Airmont Publishing, New York, which shows the main characters aboard a futuristic-looking boat on a sea of lava.

The cover from the “Book Club Edition” published by Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, in 1959.

Another fascinating cover belongs to the legendary edition published by Ace Books, America’s oldest science fiction and fantasy publisher. The translation (and the character depicted on the cover) are decidedly… modern. Notice how Axel, Otto Lidenbrock’s nephew, is wearing a leather jacket, jeans and a baseball cap!

Below we have another memorable edition, at least for American audiences: Classics illustrated. Published from the forties to the seventies, the series introduced young readers to adventure classics, from Moby Dick to Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Pastel colours and a vivid illustration. That’s the 1962 cover drawn by Alan E. Cober, the American artist and illustrator who was a pioneer of visual journalism.

Another edition dear to the hearts of children who grew up in the sixties, this time in Spain. Editorial Bruguera was a Barcelona-based publishing house specialising in classic works of science fiction, fantasy and comics (or historietas as they’re known in Spanish).

The publishing world never quite reached extremes of Hollywood, however. So please excuse the digression, but we simply had to show you these incredible vintage compositions: two posters – one American, the other Japanese – promoting the cinematic adaptation of Journey to the Centre of the Earth, released 1959. We bet you would have wanted these hanging on your bedroom wall too, right?

Covers of Journey to the Centre of the Earth from around the world

Jules Verne’s novels enabled adults and children across the globe to discover hidden worlds, real and imagined. So, in keeping with Verne’s spirit of exploration and adventure, here’s a hand-picked selection of the best international covers to Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Below, left is the cover to a Japanese edition of Journey to the Centre of the Earth from 1990. Can you guess who did the print on the cover? That’s right, Verne’s trusted illustrator, Édouard Riou. On the right is the cover for a Chinese edition, which looks more like a comic!

Next we have a modern Greek cover, a classic German cover for Journey to the Centre of the Earth from Diogenes (1978) and a contemporary Danish cover published by Lindhardt og Ringhof in 2018.

Two different covers to Journey to the Centre of the Earth in Arabic.

And, to wrap things up, two starkly contrasting covers. One Spanish, minimalist and typographical; the other a vintage Russian  cover from 1926 in which professor Otto Lidenbrock is confronted with a giant walrus!

Which do you think is the most fitting cover to Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth?