Not one of his best in my opinion, he was better at contemporary situations rather than historical novels, Anthony Trollope was the same. 

8 February 1828 - Jules Verne born.

French novelist, arguably the greatest writer of science fiction/adventure stories of the 19th century, with a eye for future innovations.

Among them - Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) and The Mysterious Island (1874). All of which and more have been dramatized for film and TV. 

It would be very hard even convincing a kid to watch the Jules Vern movies now because kids have learned in school and are much better educated than their great grand parents were and know that the centre of the earth is not a place that you can really travel to and trips around the world today don't take 80 days but can be done in a day or less. Subs are also an every day thing.

9 February 1881 - Fyodor Dostoevsky died.

Russian writer, author of some rather grim and intense novels - Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868) and The Brothers Karamazov (1880) being his most famous. 

10 February 1890 - Boris Pasternak born. 

Another writer whose fame lies almost entirely with one work, his novel Doctor Zhivago (1957) which won the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year. His other works, poetry and plays, remain popular in Russia but less so elsewhere.

He certainly looks like a sinister Boris, unlike our own Paddington Bear version.

11 February 1940 - Sir John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield, died.

Known to most as the author of the Richard Hannay series of adventure novels, to others as the politician and diplomat and Governor-General of Canada.

He wrote nearly 30 novels, the most famous of which are the five Richard Hannay stories beginning with the renowned The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915). He also wrote several biographies and works on travel and history.

His political career began in South Africa. On his return to England he served in the Ministry of Information towards the end of World War I. In 1927 he was elected to Parliament holding the seat until 1935 when he was raised to the Peerage as Baron Tweedsmuir and appointed Governor-General of Canada. It was he who signed Canada's declaration of war on Germany in September 1939.

He died five months later following a fall and a stroke at his official residence aged 64.

Tweedsmuir after the area in southern Scotland where he spent much of his childhood and Elsfield after the village in Oxfordshire where he lived from 1919 to 1935 and where his ashes are buried.

His son became the 2nd Baron upon his father's death. He died in 1996 with no sons, so the title passed to his brother William. He died in 2008 aged 92 whereupon his son John succeeded as the 4th and current Baron Tweedsmuir.

Muir is Scots for moor and Tweed is the river Tweed that flows through the area of Scotland where John Buchan grew up. 

I only found this out today. Apparently the word "tweed" was only coined around 1830, by mistake. It seems a London merchant misread the word "tweels" ( Scottish dialect for twills) in a letter from a supplier in Hawick in the Scottish borders. He assumed it referred to the river Tweed which flows through the area and he used it in his advertising. Although tweed is manufactured in the borders it's more common in the Highlands and Islands.

It does now, but only after the misreading of a letter nearly 200 years ago. Such are the oddities of the evolution of language.