Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was born on the 8th of February 1828 on Île Feydeau in Nantes. This small artificial island sat within the river Loire before it was filled in and incorporated into the surrounding land area. He lived at No. 4 Rue Olivier-de-Clisson inside the house of his maternal grandmother Dame Sophie Marie Adélaïde Julienne Allotte de La Fuëe. His parents were Pierre Verne, an avoué originally from Provins, and Sophie Allotte de La Fuëe, a local woman from a family of navigators and shipowners with distant Scottish descent. The family moved to No. 2 Quai Jean-Bart in 1829 where his brother Paul was born that same year.
In 1834 at age six Verne attended boarding school at 5 Place du Bouffay in Nantes. Madame Sambin taught there and she was the widow of a naval captain who had disappeared thirty years prior. She often told her students that her husband would return like Robinson Crusoe from his desert island paradise. This theme of the robinsonade stayed with Verne throughout his life and appeared in many novels including The Mysterious Island published in 1874 and The Castaways of the Flag published in 1900.
Verne later recalled a deep fascination with the river and the merchant vessels navigating it during vacations at Chantenay. He also took holidays at Brains staying in the house of his uncle Prudent Allotte who was a retired shipowner and mayor of Brains from 1828 to 1837. Legend claims that in 1839 at age eleven Verne secretly procured a spot as cabin boy on the three-mast ship Coralie intending to travel to the Indies. The evening the ship set out for the Indies Pierre Verne arrived just in time to catch his son and make him promise to travel only in his imagination.
In July 1848 Verne left Nantes again for Paris where his father intended him to finish law studies and take up law as a profession. He obtained permission from his father to rent a furnished apartment at 24 Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie which he shared with Édouard Bonamy another student of Nantes origin. Verne arrived in Paris during a time of political upheaval known as the French Revolution of 1848. In February Louis Philippe I had been overthrown and fled while social tension remained high.
Verne used family connections to enter Paris society through literary salons frequented by Mme de Barrère a friend of his mother. While continuing his law studies he fed his passion for theater writing numerous plays. He later recalled being greatly under the influence of Victor Hugo indeed very excited by reading and re-reading his works. Another source of creative stimulation came from a neighbor living on the same floor named Aristide Hignard who was a young composer. Verne wrote several texts for Hignard to set as chansons.
During this period Verne's letters to his parents focused primarily on expenses and on a suddenly appearing series of violent stomach cramps the first of many he would suffer from during his life. Modern scholars have hypothesized that he suffered from colitis though Verne believed the illness to have been inherited from his mother's side. Rumors of an outbreak of cholera in March 1849 exacerbated these medical concerns yet another health problem struck in 1851 when Verne suffered the first of four attacks of facial paralysis.
In 1862 through their mutual acquaintance Alfred de Bréhat Verne came into contact with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel. He submitted to him the manuscript of his developing novel then called Voyage en Ballon. Hetzel had long been planning to launch a high-quality family magazine in which entertaining fiction would combine with scientific education. He saw Verne 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 the 31st of January 1863. To secure his services for the planned magazine to be called the Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation Hetzel 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. For the rest of his lifetime most of his novels would be serialized in Hetzel's Magasin before their appearance in book form beginning with The Adventures of Captain Hatteras published from 1864 to 1865.
When The Adventures of Captain Hatteras was published in book form in 1866 Hetzel publicly announced his literary and educational ambitions for Verne's novels. He stated that Verne's works would form a novel sequence called the Voyages extraordinaires or Extraordinary Journeys. Hetzel declared that Verne's aim was to outline all geographical geological physical and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount in an entertaining format the history of the universe.
In 1867 Verne bought a small boat named the Saint-Michel which he successively replaced with the Saint-Michel II and the Saint-Michel III as his financial situation improved. On board the Saint-Michel III he sailed around Europe. After his first novel most of his stories were first serialised in the Magazine d'Éducation et de Récréation a Hetzel biweekly publication before being published in book form. His brother Paul contributed to the 40th French climbing of Mont-Blanc and a collection of short stories titled Doctor Ox in 1874.
Verne became wealthy and famous but his son Michel married an actress against his father's wishes had two children by an underage mistress and buried himself in debts. The relationship between father and son improved as Michel grew older. In July 1858 Verne and Aristide Hignard seized an opportunity offered by Hignard's brother for a sea voyage at no charge from Bordeaux to Liverpool and Scotland. The journey Verne's first trip outside France deeply impressed him and upon his return to Paris he fictionalized his recollections to form the backbone of a semi-autobiographical novel Backwards to Britain written in the autumn and winter of 1859, 1860 and not published until 1989.
On the 9th of March 1886 as Verne returned home his twenty-six-year-old nephew Gaston shot at him twice with a pistol. The first bullet missed but the second one entered Verne's left leg giving him a permanent limp that could not be overcome. This incident was not publicised in the media but Gaston spent the rest of his life in a mental asylum. After the deaths of both his mother and Hetzel who died in 1886 Jules Verne began publishing darker works.
In 1888 he entered politics and was elected town councillor of Amiens where he championed several improvements and served for fifteen years. Verne was made a knight of France's Legion of Honour on the 9th of April 1870 and subsequently promoted in Legion of Honour rank to Officer on the 19th of July 1892. He had been raised as a Roman Catholic but gravitated towards deism over time. Some scholars believe his novels reflect a deist philosophy as they often involve the notion of God or divine providence but rarely mention the concept of Christ.
Translation of Verne into English began in 1852 when his short story A Voyage in a Balloon published in 1851 appeared in the American journal Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature and Art in a translation by Anne T. Wilbur. Translation of his novels began in 1869 with William Lackland's translation of Five Weeks in a Balloon originally published in 1863 and continued steadily throughout Verne's lifetime. Publishers and hired translators often worked in great haste to rush his most lucrative titles into English-language print.
Unlike Hetzel who targeted all ages with his publishing strategies for the Voyages extraordinaires the British and American publishers chose to market his books almost exclusively to young audiences. This business move had a long-lasting effect on Verne's reputation in English-speaking countries implying that Verne could be treated purely as a children's author. These early English-language translations have been widely criticized for their extensive textual omissions errors and alterations and are not considered adequate representations of Verne's actual novels.
In an essay for The Guardian British writer Adam Roberts commented that he hadn't been reading Jules Verne at all until recently. He described it as a bizarre situation for a world-famous writer to be in noting no major writer has been so poorly served by translation. Since 1965 a considerable number of more accurate English translations of Verne have appeared yet older deficient translations continue to be republished due to their public domain status.
Verne is frequently cited as one of the founders of science fiction alongside H. G. Wells though many earlier writers such as Lucian of Samosata Voltaire and Mary Shelley have also been cited as creators of the genre. Maurice Renard claimed that Verne never wrote a single sentence of scientific-marvelous. Verne himself argued repeatedly in interviews that his novels were not meant to be read as scientific saying I have invented nothing.
His own goal was rather to depict the earth and at the same time to realize a very high ideal of beauty of style. Closely related to Verne's science-fiction reputation is the often-repeated claim that he is a prophet of scientific progress. These claims have a long history especially in America but the modern scholarly consensus is that such claims of prophecy are heavily exaggerated. In a 1961 article critical of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas scientific accuracy Theodore L. Thomas speculated that readers' faulty memories caused people to remember things from it that are not there.
As with science fiction Verne himself flatly denied that he was a futuristic prophet saying that any connection between scientific developments and his work was mere coincidence. He attributed his indisputable scientific accuracy to his extensive research noting even before he began writing stories he always took numerous notes out of every book newspaper magazine or scientific report that he came across.
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Common questions
When and where was Jules Verne born?
Jules Gabriel Verne was born on the 8th of February 1828 on Île Feydeau in Nantes. He lived at No. 4 Rue Olivier-de-Clisson inside the house of his maternal grandmother Dame Sophie Marie Adélaïde Julienne Allotte de La Fuëe.
What happened to Jules Verne on the 9th of March 1886?
On the 9th of March 1886 as Verne returned home his twenty-six-year-old nephew Gaston shot at him twice with a pistol. The second bullet entered Verne's left leg giving him a permanent limp that could not be overcome.
Who published Jules Verne's novel Five Weeks in a Balloon?
Pierre-Jules Hetzel published Five Weeks in a Balloon on the 31st of January 1863. Hetzel drew up a long-term contract for Verne to provide three volumes of text per year for his planned magazine called Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation.
How did Jules Verne die and what were his final years like?
Jules Gabriel Verne died after suffering from facial paralysis attacks starting in 1851 and a shooting incident in 1886. He entered politics in 1888 being elected town councillor of Amiens where he served for fifteen years until his death.
When was Jules Verne made an Officer of the Legion of Honour?
Verne was promoted to Officer rank in France's Legion of Honour on the 19th of July 1892. He had previously been made a knight of France's Legion of Honour on the 9th of April 1870.