Jules Verne

The French novelist Jules Verne (1828-1905) was the first authentic exponent of modern science fiction. The best of his work is characterized by intelligent predictions of technical achievements actually within man's grasp at the time Verne wrote.

Jules Verne was born on Feb. 8, 1828, at Nantes, the eldest son of a prosperous provincial lawyer. An otherwise uneventful childhood was marked by one major escapade. In his twelfth year, Jules shipped as a cabin boy on an ocean-going three-master. The ship was intercepted by his father before it had put out to sea, and Jules is said to have promised his parents that "in future he would travel only in imagination"—a prediction fulfilled in a manner his parents could not have foreseen.

Career as a Playwright

In 1847 Verne went to Paris to study law, although privately he was already planning a literary career. Owing to the friendship he made with Alexandre Dumas the Elder, Verne's first play, Broken Straws, was produced—with some success—in 1850. From 1852 to 1855 he held a steady and ill-paid position as secretary of a Paris theater, the Théâtre Lyrique. He continued to write comedies and operettas and began contributing short stories to a popular magazine, Le Musée des familles.

During a visit to Amiens in May 1856, Verne met and fell in love with the widowed daughter of an army officer, Madame Morel (née Honorine de Viane), whom he married the following January. The circumstance that his wife's brother was a stockbroker may have influenced Verne in making the unexpected decision to embrace this profession. Membership in the Paris Exchange did not seriously interfere with his literary labors, however, because he adopted a rigorous timetable, rising at five o'clock in order to put in several hours researching and writing before beginning his day's work at the Bourse.

First Novels

Verne's first long work of fiction, Five Weeks in a Balloon, took the form of an account of a journey by air over Central Africa, at that time largely unexplored. The book, published in January 1863, was an immediate success. He then decided to retire from stockbroking and to devote himself full time to authorship. His next few books were immensely successful at the time and are still counted among the best he wrote. A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) describes the adventures of a party of explorers and scientists who descend the crater of an Icelandic volcano and discover an underground world. The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (1866) centers on an expedition to the North Pole (not actually reached by Robert Peary until 1909). In From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and its sequel, Round the Moon (1870), Verne describes how two adventurous Americans—joined, naturally, by an equally intrepid Frenchman—arrange to be fired in a hollow projectile from a gigantic cannon that lifts them out of the earth's gravity field and takes them close to the moon. Verne not only pictured the state of weightlessness his "astronauts" experienced during their flight, but also he had the prescience to locate their launching site in Florida.

Later Works

Verne wrote his two masterpieces when he was in his 40s. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870) relates the voyages of the submarine Nautilus, built and commanded by the mysterious Capt. Nemo, one of the literary figures in whom Verne incorporated many of his own character traits. Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) is the story of a successful wager made by a typically phlegmatic Englishman, Phineas Fogg, a character said to have been modeled on Verne's father, who had a mania for punctuality. Other popular novels include The Mysterious Island (1875) and Michael Strogoff (1876). Verne's total literary output comprised nearly 80 books, but many of them are of little value or interest today. One noteworthy feature of all his work is its moral idealism, which earned him in 1884 the personal congratulations of Pope Leo XIII. "If I am not always what I ought to be, " Verne once wrote, "my characters will be what I should like to be." His interest in scientific progress was tempered by his robust religious faith, and in some of his later novels (such as The Purchase of the North Pole, 1889), he showed himself aware of the social dangers of uncontrolled technological advance.

Verne the Man

Verne's personality was complex. Though capable of bouts of extreme liveliness and given to punning and playing practical jokes, he was fundamentally a shy man, happiest when alone in his study or when sailing the English Channel in a converted fishing smack. In 1886 he was the victim of a shooting affray, which left him lame. His assailant proved to be a nephew who was suffering from an attack of persecution mania. This incident served to reinforce Verne's natural tendency to melancholy. Although he stood successfully for election to the city council of Amiens two years later, he spent his old age in close retirement. In 1902 he became partially blind; he died on March 24, 1905.

Further Reading

Verne's niece, Marguerite Allotte de la Fuye, published a biography based partly on family papers, Jules Verne (1928; trans. 1954). Kenneth Allott, Jules Verne (1940), is a full biography with critical appraisal of Verne's books. I. O. Evans, Jules Verne and His Work (1965), in spite of its naively uncritical approach, contains interesting illustrative material and an extensive bibliography.

Additional Sources

Costello, Peter, Jules Verne: inventor of science fiction, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1978.

Evans, I. O.. (Idrisyn Oliver), Jules Verne and his work, Mattituck N.Y.: Aeonian Press, 1976.

Jules-Verne, Jean, Jules Verne: a biography, New York: Taplinger Pub. Co., 1976. □

Verne, Jules

French Science Fiction Novelist 1828-1905

Jules Gabriel Verne, one of the founding fathers of science fiction, was born in Nantes, France, in 1828. He was the eldest son of a successful provincial lawyer. At twelve years of age, Verne ran off to be a cabin boy on a merchant ship, thinking he was going to have an adventure. But his father caught up with the ship before it got very far and took Verne home to punish him. Verne promised in the future he would travel only in his imagination.

In 1847 Verne was sent to study law in Paris, and from 1848 until 1863 wrote opera librettos and plays as a hobby. He read incessantly and studied astronomy, geology, and engineering for many hours in Paris libraries. His first play was published in 1850, prompting his decision to discontinue his law studies. Displeased upon hearing this news, his father stopped paying his son's expenses in Paris. This forced Verne to earn money by selling his stories.

In 1862, at the age of thirty-four, Verne sent a series of works called Voyages Extraordinaire to Pierre-Jules Hetzel, a writer and publisher of literature for children and young adults. Verne attained enough success with the first in the series, Five Weeks in a Balloon, published in 1863, for the Verne/Hetzel collaboration to continue throughout his entire career. Hetzel published Verne's stories in his periodical, Magasin d'Education et de Recreation, and later released them in book form.

Due to nineteenth-century interest in science and invention, Verne's work was received with enormous popular favor. He forecast with remarkable accuracy many scientific achievements of the twentieth century. He anticipated flights into outer space, automobiles, submarines, helicopters, atomic power, telephones, air conditioning, guided missiles, and motion pictures long before they were developed. In his novels, however, science and technology are not the heroes. Instead, his heroes are admirable men who master science and technology. His object was to write books from which the young could learn.

Among his most popular books are Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1870), Mysterious Island (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). These five novels have remained in almost continuous print for over a century. Verne also produced an illustrated geography of France, and his works have been the source of many films.

Because of the popularity of these and other novels, Verne became a wealthy man. In 1857 he married Honorine de Viane. In 1876 he bought a large yacht and sailed around Europe. This was the extent of his real-life adventuring, leaving the rest for his novels. He maintained a regular writing schedule of at least two volumes a year. Verne published sixty-five novels, thirty plays, librettos, geographies, occasional short stories, and essays.

The last novel he wrote before his death was The Invasion of the Sea. He died in the city of Amiens, France, in 1905.

see also Careers in Writing, Photography, and Filmmaking (volume 1); Literature (volume 1).

Vickie Elaine Caffey

Bibliography

Verne, Jules. Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). New York: William Morrow &Company, 1988.

Internet Resources

From the Earth to the Moon Interactive. NASA Johnson Space Center. <http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/she/bioverne.htm>.

"Jules Verne." <http://www.northstar.k12.ak.us/schools/ryn/spacerace/people/verne.html>.

"Jules Verne's Life History." <http://www.people.virginia.edu/~mtp0f/flips/history.html>.

Jules Verne , 1828–1905, French novelist, originator of modern science fiction. After completing his studies at the Nantes lycée, he went to Paris to study law. He early became interested in the theater and wrote (1848–50) librettos for operettas. For some years his concerns alternated between business and the theater, but after 1863 he drew upon his interest in science and geography to write a series of romances of extraordinary journeys, in which he anticipated, with remarkable foresight, many scientific and technological achievements of the 20th cent.

Verne is especially known to English readers in translations of his Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863), A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), The Mysterious Island (1875), and Michael Strogoff (1876). Extremely popular, he wrote more than 50 books by the time he died. Plays and motion pictures have been made from many of his works, which are still widely read, particularly by the young. In 1989 the manuscript of Verne's long-lost 1863 novel Paris in the 20th Century was discovered; the pessimistic and prophetic futurist work was published in 1994.

Bibliography: See A. B. Evans, Jules Verne Rediscovered (1988).

Verne, Jules (1828–1905), French author, who was born at Nantes and was an accomplished yachtsman. He originally studied for the Bar, but went to Paris where he wrote the librettos for a couple of comic operas which were reasonably successful. This encouraged him into a writing career, and with the publication in a magazine of some travel stories, he found his true métier in travel tales with a background of scientific knowledge and invention, which proved immensely popular all through Europe. If Around the World in Eighty Days (1872) is his most famous book, his Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869) runs it very close. He has now given his name to a round-the-world yacht race. See yachting: racing against time.

Verne, Jules (1828–1905), French novelist, author of a long series of books combining adventure and popular science. Among his most successful stories are: Voyage au centre de la terre (1864, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 1871); Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1872), the adventures of Captain Nemo and his crew aboard the submarine Nautilus; and Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1873, Around the World in Eighty Days), recounting the travels of the Englishman Phileas Fogg and his valet, Passepartout.

JULES VERNE (1828-1905)

Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury said that Jules Verne embodies the whole history of humanity. Indeed, Verne lived in an era marked by and obsessed with scientific developments. His novels, filled with technological descriptions, made him one of the founders of science fiction.

Verne, Jules (1828–1905) French novelist. He is often considered one of the founding fathers of science fiction. Verne's imaginative adventure novels include Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).