Jules Verne (1828–1905) was a French novelist, the author of the Voyages extraordinaires: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days. He is one of the most translated authors in the world.
Works
Around the World in Eighty Days
Nantes and Paris
Jules Verne was born on 8 February 1828 in Nantes, a busy port, the son of a lawyer. He grew up watching the ships on the Loire, and family legend says that as a boy he tried to run away on a ship bound for the Indies.
Sent to Paris to study law, he preferred the theatre. He wrote plays and opera librettos, worked as secretary of the Théâtre-Lyrique and read widely in the sciences in the libraries of Paris.
The meeting with Hetzel
In 1862 the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel accepted Five Weeks in a Balloon and signed Verne to a long contract. The novels came out in Hetzel's Magasin d'éducation et de récréation and in illustrated volumes, under the general title Voyages extraordinaires.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872–1873) made him famous. He wrote some sixty novels in all.
Amiens
In 1872 Verne settled in Amiens, his wife's town, where he was elected to the town council. He sailed his own boats, the Saint-Michel, and travelled in Europe and to America.
In 1886 a mentally ill nephew shot him in the leg, leaving him lame. His later novels grew darker. He died in Amiens on 24 March 1905; his son Michel published several of his last manuscripts, after revising them.
Anecdotes
Phileas Fogg on stage
The stage version of Around the World in Eighty Days, written with Adolphe d'Ennery in 1874, with a real elephant, ran for years in Paris and earned Verne more money than the novel.
Paris in the Twentieth Century
Hetzel turned down a novel Verne wrote around 1863, Paris in the Twentieth Century, finding it too gloomy. The manuscript was found in a safe by a great-grandson and published only in 1994.
Frequently asked questions
Where did Jules Verne live?
He was born in Nantes and lived in Amiens from 1872 until his death in 1905. His house in Amiens is now a museum.
Who was Verne's publisher?
Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who published the Voyages extraordinaires from 1863 and influenced the content of several novels.
Did Jules Verne travel around the world?
No. He sailed in Europe and visited the United States in 1867, but he wrote most of his voyages from books, maps and scientific journals.