Jules Verne: The Ice Sphinx

In The Icy Sphinx, Verne attempted to build on Edgar Allan Poe's The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym. Poe's fascinating account of a voyage to the South Seas ends with a mysterious scene: The refugees find themselves in a cloud of steam, from which a white figure flashes. Verne was intrigued by this scene and wrote a sequel to the story, which was supposed to explain the whole mystery. Jules Verne began writing The Ice Sphinx in the autumn of 1895 and finished it in 1897.