Jules Verne Bio, Books, Father, Wife, Son, twenty thousand under the sea

Jules Verne Biography

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. Verne’s collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires. 

A widely popular series of thoroughly researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).

Verne is considered a major literary author in France and most of Europe. where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism.

His reputation is markedly different in Anglophone regions, where he has often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children’s books, largely because of the highly abridged and altered translations in which his novels have often been printed.

Verne is the second most-translated author in the universe since 1979. ranking between Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare.

Jules Verne Early

Jules Verne

Verne was born on 8 February 1828, on Île Feydeau, in No. 4 Rue Olivier-de-Clisson. At the age of six, Verne was sent to boarding school at 5 Place du Bouffay in Nantes.

The teacher, Mme Sambin, was the widow of a naval captain who had disappeared some 30 years before. Mme Sambin often told the students that her husband was a shipwrecked castaway.

And that he would eventually return like Robinson Crusoe from his desert island paradise. The theme of the Robinsonade stuck with Verne throughout his life and appear in many of his novels.

Jules Verne Education

Verne joined École Saint‑Stanislas in 1836, a Catholic school suiting the pious religious tastes of his father. He quickly distinguished himself in mémoire, geography, Greek, Latin, and singing.

History has it that at the age of 11, Verne secretly procured a spot as a cabin boy on the three-mast ship Coralie with the intention of traveling to the Indies and bringing back a coral necklace for his cousin Caroline.

The evening the ship set out for the Indies, it stopped first at Paimboeuf where Pierre Verne arrived just in time to catch his son and make him promise to travel “only in his imagination”.

 It is now known that the legend is an exaggerated tale invented by Verne’s first biographer, his niece Marguerite Allotte de la Füye, though it may have been inspired by a real incident.

Jules Verne Victor Hugo

When Jules Verne was 19, he had taken seriously to writing long works in the style of Victor Hugo. Started with Un prêtre en 1839 and seeing two verse tragedies, Alexandre VI and La Conspiration des poudres, to completion.

However, his father made him pursue law for he was the firstborn son of the family and the heir of their law firm. In 1847, Verne’s father sent him to Paris, primarily to begin his studies in law school. 

After a short stay in Paris, where he passed first-year law exams, Verne returned to Nantes for his father’s help in preparing for the second year provincial law students were in that era required to go to Paris to take exams.

Jules Verne Studies in Paris

In July 1848, Verne left Nantes again for Paris. where his father wanted him to finish law studies and take up law as a profession. 

Verne arrived in Paris during a time of political upheaval: the French Revolution of 1848. In February, Louis Philippe I had been overthrown and had fled.

Though writing profusely and frequenting the salons, Verne diligently pursued his law studies and graduated with a license en Droit on January 1851

Jules Verne Pierre-Michel-François Chevalie

Verne met with a fellow writer from Nantes, Pierre-Michel-François Chevalier In 1851, the editor-in-chief of the magazine Musée des Familles . Pitre-Chevalier was looking for articles about geography, history, science, and technology.

And was keen to make sure that the educational component would be made accessible to large popular audiences using a straightforward prose style or an engaging fictional story.

Verne, with his delight in diligent research, especially in geography, was a natural for the job. He first offered him a short historical adventure story, “The First Ships of the Mexican Navy”, written in the style of James Fenimore Cooper, whose novels had deeply influenced him.

 Pitre-Chevalier published it in July 1851, and in the same year published a second short story, “A Voyage in a Balloon”. The latter story, with its combination of adventurous narrative, travel themes, and detailed historical research.

Jules Verne Bibliothèque Nationale de  France

Verne spent much time at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, conducting research for his stories and feeding his passion for science and recent discoveries, especially in geography.

It was in this period that Verne met the illustrious geographer and explorer Jacques Arago, who continued to travel extensively despite his blindness.

The two men became good friends, and Arago’s innovative and witty accounts of his travels led Verne toward a newly developing genre of literature: that of travel writing.

In 1852, two new pieces from Verne appeared in the Musée des Familles: “Martin Paz”, a novella set in Lima, which Verne wrote in 1851 and published 10 July through 11 August 1852, and Les Châteaux en Californie, ou, Pierre qui roule n’amasse pas mousse.

In April and May 1854, the magazine published Verne’s short story “Master Zacharius”, an E. T. A. Hoffmann-like fantasy featuring a sharp condemnation of scientific hubris and ambition.

Followed soon afterward by “A Winter Amid the Ice”, a polar adventure story whose themes closely anticipated many of Verne’s novels. The Musée also published some nonfiction popular science articles which, though unsigned, are generally attributed to Verne.

 Verne’s work for the magazine was cut short in 1856 when he had a serious quarrel with Pitre-Chevalier and refused to continue contributing a refusal he would maintain until 1863 when Pitre-Chevalier died, and the magazine went to new editorship.

While writing stories and articles for Pitre-Chevalier, Verne began to form the idea of inventing a new kind of novel, a Roman de la Science, which would allow him to incorporate large amounts of the factual information he so enjoyed researching in the Bibliothèque.

He is said to have discussed the project with the elder Alexandre Dumas, who had tried something similar with an unfinished novel, Isaac Laquedem, and who enthusiastically encouraged Verne’s project.

At the end of 1854, another outbreak of cholera led to the death of Jules Seveste, Verne’s employer at the Théâtre Lyrique and by then a good friend.  Jules Verne remained connected to the theatre for several years after Seveste’s death.

Jules Verne  Pierre-Jules Hetzel

In 1862, through their mutual acquaintance Alfred de Bréhat, Verne came into contact with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, and submitted to him the manuscript of his developing novel, then called Voyage en Ballon.

 Hetzel, already the publisher of Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo, and other well-known authors, had long been planning to launch a high-quality family magazine in which entertaining fiction would combine with scientific education.

 He saw Verne, with his demonstrated inclination toward scrupulously researched adventure stories, as an ideal contributor for such a magazine, and accepted the novel, giving Verne suggestions for improvement.

Verne made the proposed revisions within two weeks and returned to Hetzel with the final draft, now titled Five Weeks in a Balloon. It was published by Hetzel on 31 January 1863.

To secure his services for the planned magazine, to be called the Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation, Hetzel also drew up a long-term contract in which Verne would give him three volumes of text per year. Each of which Hetzel would buy outright for a flat fee.

Verne, finding both a steady salary and a sure outlet for writing, at last, accepted immediately. For the rest of his lifetime, most of his novels would be serialized in Hetzel’s Magasin before their appearance in book form

Jules Verne Bibliography

The Voyages extraordinaires or Extraordinary Journeys is a sequence of fifty-four novels by the French writer Jules Verne, originally published between 1863 and 1905.

According to Verne’s editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel, the aim of the Voyages was “to outline all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format the history of the universe.”

Verne’s meticulous attention to detail and scientific trivia, coupled with his sense of wonder and exploration, form the backbone of the Voyages. Part of the reason for the broad appeal of his work was the sense that the reader could really learn knowledge.

Of geology, biology, astronomy, paleontology, oceanography and the exotic locations and cultures of the world through the adventures of Verne’s protagonists. This great wealth of information distinguished his works as “encyclopedic novels”.

The first of Verne’s novels to carry the title Voyages Extraordinaires was The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, which was the third of all his novels. The works in this series included both fiction and non-fiction.

Jules Verne Books

List of novels

Most of the novels in the Voyages series except for Five Weeks in a Balloon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and The Purchase of the North Pole were first serialized in periodicals.

Usually in Hetzel’s Magasin d’Éducation et de récréation “Magazine of Education and Recreation”. Almost all of the original book editions were published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in octodecimo format, often in several volumes. 

What follows are the fifty-four novels published in Verne’s lifetime, with the most common English-language title for each novel. The dates given are those of the first publication in book form

Five Weeks in a Balloon – 1863
Captain Hatteras’ Travels and Adventures – 1866
Journey to the Center of the Earth 1864, revised 1867

From the earth to the moon  1865
Captain Grant’s Children  In Search of the Castaways, 1867-8

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea  1869-70
Around the Moon  Around The Moon, 1870
A Floating City, 1871

Adventures of three Russians and three Englishmen –1872
The Fur Country  The Fur Country, 1873
Around the world in eighty days –  1873

The Mysterious Island – 1874-5
The Survivors of the Chancellor – 1875
Michel Strogoff  – 1876

Hector Servadac Off on a Comet –  1877
The Child of the Cavern – 1877

A fifteen-year-old captain Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen, 1878
The Five Hundred Millions of the Begum – 1879
He Tribulation of a Chinese in China – 1879

The Steam House – 1880
La Jangada –  1881
The School of Robinsons – 1882

Jules Verne 20000 Leagues Under The Sea

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: A Tour of the Underwater World” is a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne published in 1870.

The novel was originally serialized from March 1869 through June 1870 in Pierre-Jules Hetzel’s periodical, the Magasin d’Éducation et de Récréation. The deluxe illustrated edition, published by Hetzel in November 1871.

Included 111 illustrations by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou. The book was highly acclaimed when it was released and remains so; it is regarded as one of the premiere adventure novels and one of Verne’s greatest works.

Along with Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth. The description of Nemo’s ship, the Nautilus, was considered ahead of its time, as it accurately describes features on submarines, which at the time were very primitive vessels.

A model of the French submarine Plongeur was displayed at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, where it was studied by Jules Verne, who used it as an inspiration for the novel.

Jules Verne Short Stories

The Blockade Runners
The Count of Chanteleine
Doctor Ox

Dr. Ox’s Experiment
A Drama in Mexico
A Drama in the Air

The Eternal Adam
Frritt-Flacc
Gil Braltar

Martin Paz
Master Zacharius
The Mutineers of the Bounty
A Winter Amid the Ice

Jules Verne Predictions

Jules Verne has earned a place in the history of literature as one of the most important writers of adventure novels of recent history. But his novels contain more than just entertainment.

Their pages contain hidden scientific data, descriptions of inventions and, above all, a love of technological innovations and the progress of humanity. From his perspective as a nineteenth-century man, Verne shocked the world with tales of gadgets and vehicles.

years later, eventually this takes shape outside fiction, just as Isaac Asimov did years later. His influence has been such that it has come to serve as an inspiration to an entire cultural and aesthetic movement.

A brief look at the novelties appearing in the author’s books reveals one of the main features of his inventions: all are based on the reality of the technological age in which he lived.

While Verne was able to imagine gadgets ahead of his time, he always used familiar elements to build them. The materials and fuels for his submarines and helicopters were the heirs of the industrial revolution.

In the late 1980s, a new literary, cultural and aesthetic movement took shape. Its followers imagine a future full of innovations … but with a difference: they are not based on the advances of their time.

Instead, they took nineteenth-century technology as the starting point, the same that appears in the Jules Verne’s novels.

Jules Verne Movies

Captain Nemo – miniseries
The Children of Captain Grant- film
The Conquest of the Pole

The Czar’s Courier
The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
Five Weeks in a Balloon – film
Flight of the Lost Balloon

From the Earth to the Moon –  film
In Search for Captain Grant
In Search of the Castaways – film
Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – film
The Light at the Edge of the World
Master of the World – 1961 film

Mathias Sandorf – 1963 film
Michael Strogoff – 1944 film
Michel Strogoff – 1926 film

Michel Strogoff – 1936 film
Michel Strogoff – 1956 film

Jules Quotes

“We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.”

“Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.”
“Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make because they lead little by little to the truth.”

“The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the Living Infinite. ”

“I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.”
“If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning.”

“We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.”
“Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.”

“The chance which now seems lost may present itself at the last moment.”
“Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make because they lead little by little to the truth.”

“While there is life there is hope. I beg to assert…that as long as a man’s heartbeats, as long as a man’s flesh quivers, I do not allow that a being gifted with thought and will allow himself to despair.”

“On the surface of the ocean, men wage war and destroy each other; but down here, just a few feet beneath the surface, there is a calm and peace, unmolested by man”

“Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.”

Jules Death 

Verne died at his home in Amiens On 24 March 1905. The cause of death was prolonged diabetes illness. His son, Michel Verne, oversaw the publication of the novels Invasion of the Sea and The Lighthouse at the End of the World after Jules’s death.

The Voyages extraordinaires series continued for several years afterward at the same rate of two volumes a year. It was later discovered that Michel Verne had made extensive changes in these stories, and the original versions were eventually published at the end of the 20th century by the Jules Verne Society.

In 1919, Michel Verne published The Barsac Mission, which original drafts contained references to Esperanto, language about which his father had great interest.

In 1989, Verne’s great-grandson discovered his ancestor’s as yet unpublished novel Paris in the Twentieth Century which was subsequently published in 1994.

Jules Legacy

Verne’s novels have had a wide influence on both literary and scientific works; writers known to have been influenced by Verne include Marcel Aymé, Roland Barthes, René Barjavel, Michel Butor, Blaise Cendrars, Paul Claudel, etc.

He is credited with helping inspire the steampunk genre, a literary and social movement that glamorizes science fiction based on 19th-century technology. Ray Bradbury summed up Verne’s influence on literature and science the world over by saying: “We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne.”

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