5 h 51 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 5 h 51 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the man who proves you wrong about flight also takes away your freedom?
At Philadelphia’s Weldon Institute, balloon enthusiasts argue over where to place a propeller. Then Robur challenges their whole idea of flight. Uncle Prudent, the club’s stubborn president, and Phil Evans, its calmer secretary, find themselves prisoners aboard the Albatross, a flying ship that makes their convictions hard to defend.
In Jules Verne’s Robur the Conqueror, invention drives a journey across American plains, the Pacific, Asia and Africa. Prudent’s frightened servant, Frycollin, shares the voyage, while Robur commands a loyal crew. Beneath the changing views lies a sharper question: what does progress mean when the inventor answers to no government and his passengers cannot leave?
What you’ll discover
- A ship above the world Step aboard the Albatross, with its deck, cabins and crew high above familiar ground.
- Two visions of flight Follow the clash between devoted balloon enthusiasts and an inventor who champions heavier-than-air machines.
- Pride under pressure Watch Uncle Prudent face a working invention that challenges the beliefs he fiercely defends.
- A journey without consent Share the unease of captive passengers as vast landscapes pass beneath their flying ship.
- Freedom against progress Weigh the claims of rules and votes against Robur’s refusal to answer to anyone.
Who will love it
This book is for readers who love old-fashioned adventure, marvelous machines and journeys across the whole map. It also rewards anyone who enjoys comic quarrels.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- The sky unsettles the experts
- Pride divides the balloon club
- An argument becomes an abduction
- The Albatross makes invention visible
- A prisoner finds another opening
- Rescue and anger share the sky
- Force cannot secure willing agreement
- Progress needs more than a maker
- Wonder meets stubbornness above the world
Who’s who
- RoburA brilliant, fearless engineer who built the Albatross and wants the world to admit that heavier than air flight is the future.
- Uncle PrudentThe hot tempered, wealthy president of the Weldon Institute, who believes in balloons and wants revenge on Robur.
- Phil EvansThe cool, rich secretary of the club, Prudent's old rival, who joins him against Robur and keeps looking for a chance to escape.
- FrycollinPrudent's timid, hungry valet, who is terrified of heights and only wants to stand on solid ground again.
- Tom TurnerRobur's loyal mate, a stout Englishman who plays the trumpet and fires the harpoon and the gun.
- Francois TapageThe French cook of the Albatross, probably a Gascon, who teases Frycollin and prepares meals for the crew.
- Jem ChipThe Weldon Institute's vegetarian treasurer, who doubts Robur's claim loudly from his seat at the meeting.
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Robur the Conqueror
by Jules Verne · 1886
A trumpet blares from empty sky, and a flying ship carries two feuding balloonists around the world.
Medium level2–5 hours to read20 languages
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“We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne.”
In short
What would you do if the sky itself began to play a trumpet? In the spring when this story opens, observatories on three continents hear strange notes and see lights that move faster than any train.
Robur the Conqueror at a glance
- Reading time
- About 3 h 20 min2 h 40 min fast, 3 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 47,400 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1886by Jules Verne
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Mystery in the Sky Puzzles Everyone
The book opens with two gentlemen firing pistols at each other near Niagara Falls. Their quarrel is about a tune. One says the notes from the sky were Rule Britannia, and the other says Yankee Doodle.
The joke shows how nervous the world has become. For a month, a sound like a trumpet and a flash of light have appeared over America, then Europe, then Asia. Verne tours the observatories, and each answers in its own style. Paris admits that every section knows nothing. Greenwich and Oxford agree only that it is an illusion.
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Which edition is right for me
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Details
- First published
- 1886
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 3 h 50 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Verne, Jules. Robur the Conqueror. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/robur-the-conqueror.
Verne, J. (2026). Robur the Conqueror. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/robur-the-conqueror (Original work published 1886)
Verne, Jules. Robur the Conqueror. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/robur-the-conqueror.
@book{verne2026robur,
author = {Verne, Jules},
title = {Robur the Conqueror},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/robur-the-conqueror},
note = {First published 1886}
}
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What is Robur the Conqueror about?
It tells of an engineer who flies a machine heavier than air, the Albatross, and carries two stubborn balloonists around the world to prove his point. It mixes comedy, travel and the debate over how people will fly.
Who is Robur in Robur the Conqueror?
Robur is a forty year old engineer of unknown nationality who speaks English fluently. He has built a flying ship, the Albatross, lifted by seventy four screws, and he is sure that balloons are a dead end.
What is the Albatross in the book?
The Albatross is Robur's airship, a deck one hundred feet long carried by seventy four lifting screws and driven by two propellers. It runs on electricity, is made of pressed paper, and can fly about one hundred and twenty miles an hour.
The author
Jules Verne
1828–1905 · French adventure novelist
Jules Verne was a French writer born in Nantes in 1828. He lived in Paris and later in Amiens, where he died in 1905. His novels include Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).
“Well, by the right of the strongest!”
More by Jules Verne
See all their booksMore like this
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