Jules Verne, before he became the famous novelist we know today from Around the World in 80 Days, learned his profession writing for the stage. Many of those youthful plays have been discovered for the first time, and three are translated into English for the first time in Scheherazade's Last Night and Other Plays. In An Excursion at Sea, Verne offers a humorous account of a nautical adventure interrupted by pirates. In La Guimard, he relates a love affair between the dancer, and the painter Jacques-Louis David, creating a realistic historical background as well as a deeply-felt romance. And in The Thousand and Second Night, Verne draws upon the world of the Arabian Nights to tell how the Sultan and the story-telling Scheherazade are finally united in marriage.

Translator Peter Schulman is Professor of French and International Studies at Old Dominion University.