The English at the North Pole is the first part of Jules Verne's The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, the second part being The Desert of Ice. The novel, set in 1861, described adventures of British expedition led by Captain John Hatteras to the North Pole. He is convinced that the sea around the pole is not frozen. Mutiny by the crew results in destruction of their ship but Hatteras, with a few men, continues on the expedition. Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction. He was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including A Journey to the Interior of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days.