Jules Verne and the humorous travelogue: le Voyage à reculons en Angleterre et en Écosse

This article is devoted to the Voyage [à reculons] en Angleterre et en Ecosse (1859), a text that remained unpublished until 1989. With its explicit references to Sterne and Nodier, its taste for paradox and irony, this story is part of the tradition of humorous travelogue, itself a variation on the eccentric story. Jules Verne often presents a satirical painting of the United Kingdom, its mores, and its industrialization, a portrait that imparts a great deal to us about the young author’s vision of the nineteenth century.