The Steam House

The Steam House
Author(s)	Jules Verne
Original title	La Maison à vapeur
Illustrator	Léon Benett
Country	France
Language	French
Series	The Extraordinary Voyages #20
Genre(s)	Adventure novel
Publisher	Pierre-Jules Hetzel
Publication date	1880
Published in English	1880
Media type	Print (Hardback)
ISBN	N/A
OCLC Number	2653988
Preceded by	Tribulations of a Chinaman in China
Followed by	Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon

The Steam House (French: La maison à vapeur) is a Jules Verne novel recounting the travels of a group of British colonists in the Raj in a wheeled house pulled by a steam-powered mechanical elephant. (In fact, Steam cars of various types an designs were actually being built at the time of writing, though none in the shape of en elephant is known).

Jules Verne uses the mechanical house as a plot device to have the reader travel in nineteenth century India. The descriptions are interspersed with historical information and social commentary.

The book takes place in the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 against British rule, with the passions and traumas aroused still very much alive among Indians and British alike. An alternate title by which the book was known - "The End of Nana Sahib" - refers to the appearance in the book of a real historical figure: rebel leader Nana Sahib, a hero to many Indians and the most heinous of murderers in British eyes.

As history records, Nana Sahib disappeared after the crushing of the rebellion and his subsequent fate was never known; Verne tries to offer a fictional answer to this perplexing question.

Alternative titles

• Demon of Cawnpore (Part 1 of 2)
• Demon of the Cawnpore (Part 1 of 2)
• Steam House (Part I) The Demon of Cawnpore
• Steam House (Part II) Tigers and Traitors
• Tigers and Traitors (Part 2 of 2)
• Tigers and Traitors, Steam House (Part 2 of 2)
• The End of Nana Sahib

See also

Novels portal

• History of steam road vehicles

External links

• The End Of Nana Sahib The Steam House
• Maison a vapeur - 1880