The Secret of the Island was another of the series of Voyages Extraordinaires which ran through a famous Paris magazine for younger readers, the Magasin Illustre. It formed the third and completing part of the Mysterious Island set of tales of adventure. We may count it, taken separately, as next to Robinson Crusoe and possibly Treasure Island, the best read and the best appreciated book in all that large group of island-tales and sea-stories to which it belongs."

The present romance, the second in the Mysterious Island triad, was originally issued in Paris with the title of L'Abandonne. Jules Verne's list of stories already ran then to some twenty volumes-a number which has since grown to almost Dumasien proportions. L'Abandonne, like its two companion tales, ran its course as a serial through the Magasin Illustre of education and recreation, before its issue as a boy's story-book. Its success in both forms seems to have established a record in the race for popularity and a circulation in both the French and English fields of current literature. The...