Jules Verne

Jules Verne
Jules Verne, photo by Félix Nadar
Born	Jules Gabriel Verne February 8, 1828(1828-02-08) Nantes, France
Died	March 24, 1905 (aged 77) Amiens, France
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	French
Genres	Science fiction, adventure novel
Notable work(s)	Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days
Influences Edgar Allan Poe
Influenced H.G. Wells, Julio Cortázar, Emilio Salgari, Louis Boussenard

Jules Gabriel Verne (February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905) was a French author who pioneered the science-fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Journey to the Center of the Earth (written in 1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869–1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873). Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before navigable aircraft and practical submarines were invented, and before any means of space travel had been devised. Consequently he is often referred to as the "Father of science fiction", along with H. G. Wells.^[1] Verne is the second most translated author of all time, only behind Agatha Christie with 4162 translations, according to Index Translationum.^[2] Some of his work has been made into films.

Biography

Early years

Jules Gabriel Verne was born to Pierre Verne, and his wife, Sophie-Henriette Allotte de la Fuÿe (died 1887), in the bustling harbor city of Nantes in Western France. The oldest of five children, he spent his early years at home with his parents. The family spent summers in a country house just outside the city, on the banks of the Loire River. Jules and his brother Paul, of whom Jules was very fond, would often rent a boat for a franc a day.^[3] The sight of the many ships navigating the river sparked Jules' imagination, as he describes in the autobiographical short story "Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse". When Jules was nine, he and Paul were sent to boarding school at the Saint Donatien College (Petit séminaire de Saint-Donatien). As a child, he developed a great interest in travel and exploration, a passion he showed as a writer of adventure stories and science fiction.

Verne sitting on a bench.

At the boarding school, Verne studied Latin, which he used in his short story "Le Mariage de Monsieur Anselme des Tilleuls" in the mid-1850s. One of his teachers may have been the French inventor Brutus de Villeroi, professor of drawing and mathematics at Saint Donatien in 1842, and who later became famous for creating the US Navy's first submarine, the USS Alligator. De Villeroi may have inspired Verne's conceptual design for the Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, although no direct exchanges between the two men have been recorded.

Literary debut

After completing his studies at the lycée, Jules Verne went to Paris to study law. About 1848, in conjunction with Michel Carré, he began writing librettos for operettas (he was co-librettist of Colin-Millard, a one act opera comique by Aristide Hignard). For some years his attentions were divided between the theatre and work, but some travelers' stories which he wrote for the Musée des Familles revealed to him his talent for writing fiction.

When Verne's father discovered that his son was writing rather than studying law, he promptly withdrew his financial support. Verne was forced to support himself as a stockbroker, which he hated despite being somewhat successful at it. During this period, he met Alexandre Dumas, père and Victor Hugo, who offered him writing advice. Dumas would become a close friend of Verne.^[4]

Verne also met Honorine de Viane Morel, a widow with two daughters. They were married on January 10, 1857. With her encouragement, he continued to write and actively looked for a publisher. On August 3, 1861, their son, Michel Jean Verne, was born. A classic enfant terrible, Michel was sent to Mettray Penal Colony in 1876 and later married an actress (in spite of Verne's objections), had two children by his 16-year-old mistress, and buried himself in debts. The relationship between father and son did improve as Michel grew older.

Verne's situation improved when he met Pierre-Jules Hetzel, one of the most important French publishers of the 19th century, who also published Victor Hugo, Georges Sand, and Erckmann-Chatrian, among others. They formed an excellent writer-publisher team until Hetzel's death. Hetzel helped improve Verne's writings, which until then had been repeatedly rejected by other publishers. Hetzel read a draft of Verne's story about the balloon exploration of Africa, which had been rejected by other publishers for being "too scientific". With Hetzel's help, Verne rewrote the story, which was published in 1863 in book form as Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon). Acting on Hetzel's advice, Verne added comical accents to his novels, changed sad endings into happy ones, and toned down various political messages.

A typical Hetzel front cover for a Jules Verne book. The edition is Les Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras au Pôle Nord, type "Aux deux éléphants".

From that point to years after Verne's death, Hetzel published two or more volumes a year. The most successful of these include: Voyage au centre de la terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1864); De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon, 1865); Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, 1869); and Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days), which first appeared in Le Temps in 1872. The series is collectively known as "Les voyages extraordinaires" ("extraordinary voyages"). Verne could now live on his writings. But most of his wealth came from the stage adaptations of Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1874) and Michel Strogoff (1876), a relatively conventional adventure tale set in Tsarist Russia, which he adapted for the stage with Adolphe d'Ennery. In 1867 Verne bought a small ship, 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. In 1870, he was appointed "Chevalier" (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur. 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 the form of books. Jules' brother Paul contributed to a non-fiction story "Fortieth Ascent of Mont Blanc" ("Quarantième ascension du Mont-Blanc") to the collection of short stories, Doctor Ox (1874). According to the Unesco Index Translationum, Jules Verne regularly places among the top five most translated authors in the world.

Last years

On March 9, 1886, as Verne approached his own home, his twenty-five-year-old nephew Gaston, who suffered from paranoia, shot twice at him with a gun. One bullet missed, but the second entered Verne's left leg, giving him a permanent limp. Gaston spent the rest of his life in an asylum.

Verne in 1892

After the deaths of Hetzel and his beloved mother in 1887, Verne began writing darker works. This may have been due partly to changes in his personality, but an important factor was that Hetzel's son, who took over his father's business, was not as rigorous in his edits and corrections as Hetzel Sr. had been.

In 1888, Jules Verne entered politics and was elected town councilor of Amiens, where he championed several improvements and served for fifteen years. Though elected from the left he stood with the right on Dreyfus Affair and was anti-Dreyfusard.^[5][6] In 1905, ill with diabetes, Verne died at his home, 44 Boulevard Longueville (now Boulevard Jules-Verne). His son Michel oversaw publication of his last novels Invasion of the Sea and The Lighthouse at the End of the World. The "Voyages extraordinaires" series continued for several years afterwards in the same rhythm of two volumes a year. It was later discovered that Michel Verne had made extensive changes in these stories, and the original versions were published at the end of the 20th century.

In 1863, Jules Verne wrote Paris in the 20th Century, a novel about a young man who lives in a world of glass skyscrapers, high-speed trains, gas-powered automobiles, calculators, and a worldwide communications network, yet cannot find happiness and comes to a tragic end. Hetzel thought the novel's pessimism would damage Verne's then booming career, and suggested he wait 20 years to publish it. Verne put the manuscript in a safe, where it was discovered by his great-grandson in 1989. It was published in 1994.

Death

Jules Verne died on March 24, 1905 and was buried in the Madeleine Cemetery in Amiens. There are recently (2008) initiated efforts to have him reburied in the Panthéon, alongside France's other literary giants.

Reputation in English-speaking countries

The tomb of Jules Verne in Amiens (Somme); sculpture by Albert Roze (1861-1952).

While Verne is considered in France as an author of quality books for young people, with a good command of his subjects, including technology and politics, his reputation in English-speaking countries suffered for a long time as a result of poor translation.

Some critics felt 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea portrayed the British Empire in a bad light, and the first English translator, Reverend Lewis Page Mercier, working under a pseudonym, removed many offending passages, such as those describing the political actions of Captain Nemo in his incarnation as an Indian nobleman. Such negative depictions were not, however, invariable in Verne's works; for example, Facing the Flag features, in the character of Lieutenant Devon, a heroic, self-sacrificing Royal Navy officer worthy of any created by British authors. In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea itself, Captain Nemo, an Indian, is balanced by Ned Land, a Canadian. Some of Verne's most famous heroes were British (e.g. Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days).

Mercier and subsequent British translators also had trouble with the metric system that Verne used, sometimes dropping significant figures, at other times changing the unit to an Imperial measure without changing the corresponding value. Thus Verne's calculations, which in general were remarkably exact, were converted into mathematical gibberish. Also, artistic passages and sometimes whole chapters were cut to fit the work into a constrained space for publication.

For these reasons, Verne's work initially acquired a reputation in English-speaking countries of not being fit for adult readers. This in turn prevented it from being taken seriously enough to merit new translations, and those of Mercier and others were reprinted decade after decade. Only from 1965 on have some of his novels received more accurate translations, but even today Verne's work has not been fully rehabilitated in the English-speaking world.

Verne's works may also reflect the bitterness France felt in the wake of its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) and the consequent loss of Alsace and Lorraine. The Begum's Millions (Les Cinq cents millions de la Begum) of 1879 gives a highly stereotypical depiction of Germans as monstrously cruel militarists. By contrast, almost all the protagonists in his pre-1871 works, such as the sympathetic first-person narrator in Journey to the Centre of the Earth, are German.

Hetzel's influence

Hetzel substantially influenced the writings of Verne, who was so happy to finally find a willing publisher that he agreed to almost all changes that Hetzel suggested. Hetzel rejected at least one novel (Paris in the 20th Century), and asked Verne to make significant changes in his other drafts. One of the most important changes Hetzel imposed on Verne was the adoption of a more optimistic tone. Verne was in fact not an enthusiast of technological and human progress, as can be seen in the works he created both before he met Hetzel and after the publisher's death. Hetzel's insistence on a more optimistic text proved correct. For example, The Mysterious Island originally ended with the survivors returning to mainland forever nostalgic about the island. Hetzel decided that the heroes should live happily, so in the revised draft, they use their fortunes to build a replica of the island. Many translations are like this. Also, in order not to offend France's then-ally, Russia, the famous Captain Nemo was changed from a Polish refugee avenging the partitions of Poland and the death of his family, killed in the reprisals following the January Uprising, to an Indian prince fighting the British Empire after the Sikh War.

Predictions

A mural in Tampa, Florida commemorating Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.

Jules Verne's novels have been noted for being startlingly accurate anticipations of modern times. Paris in the 20th Century is an often cited example of this as it arguably describes air conditioning, automobiles, the Internet, television, and other modern conveniences very similar to their real world counterparts.

Another example is From the Earth to the Moon, which is uncannily similar to the real Apollo Program, as three astronauts are launched from the Florida peninsula and recovered through a splash landing. In the book, the spacecraft is launched from "Tampa Town"; Tampa, Florida is approximately 130 miles from NASA's actual launching site at Cape Canaveral.^[7]

In other works, Verne predicted the inventions of helicopters, submarines, projectors, jukeboxes, and other later devices.

He also predicted the existence of underwater hydrothermal vents that were not discovered until years after he wrote about them.

Scholars' jokes

Verne, who had a large archive and always kept up with scientific and technological progress, sometimes seemed to joke with the readers, using so-called "scholars' jokes" (that is, a joke that only a scientist may recognise). For instance, in Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen, a Manticora beetle helps Cousin Bénédict to escape from imprisonment when Bénédict, unguarded, follows the beetle out of the garden. Since the beetle escapes from Cousin Bénédict by flying away, when in fact the genus is flightless, it is possible that this is one such joke. Another example appears in Mysterious Island, where the main character's dog is attacked by a wild dugong, even though the dugong, like its North American cousin, the manatee, is a herbivorous mammal. Also in Mysterious Island, because of its fauna and flora, the sailor Bonadventure Pencroff asks Cyrus Harding whether the latter believes that islands (like the one they are on) are made specially to be ideal ones for castaways. From the Earth to the Moon (the material used for the cannon — in this case it was probably poetic license, since the description of the making of the gun became far more dramatic), or The Begum's Millions, where the methods used for making steel in "Steel City", described as the most modern steel factory in the world, were rather dated, but, again, much more spectacular to describe. (See Neff, 1978)

Bibliography

Jules Verne in front of creatures from his novels and stories.

Verne wrote numerous works, most famous of which are the 54 novels part of the Voyages Extraordinaires. He also wrote short stories, essays, plays, and poems.

Note: only the dates of the first English translation and the most common translation title are given.

Voyages Extraordinaires

Main article: Voyages Extraordinaires

1. (1863) Cinq Semaines en ballon; English translation: Five Weeks in a Balloon (1869)
2. (1866) Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras; English translation: The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (1874-75)
3. (1864) Voyage au centre de la Terre; English translation: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1871)
4. (1865) De la terre à la lune; English translation: From the Earth to the Moon (1867)
5. (1867-68) Les Enfants du capitaine Grant; English translation: In Search of the Castaways (1873)
6. (1869-70) Vingt mille lieues sous les mers; English translation: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1872)
7. (1870) Autour de la lune; English translation: Around the Moon (1873)
8. (1871) Une ville flottante; English translation: A Floating City (1874)
9. (1872) Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais; English translation: The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa (1872)
10. (1873) Le Pays des fourrures; English translation: The Fur Country (1873)
11. (1873) Le Tour du Monde en quatre-vingts jours; English translation: Around the World in Eighty Days (1873)
12. (1874-75) L'Île mysterieuse; English translation: The Mysterious Island (1874)
13. (1875) Le Chancellor; English translation: The Survivors of the Chancellor (1875)
14. (1876) Michel Strogoff; English translation: Michael Strogoff (1876)
15. (1877) Hector Servadac; English translation: Off on a Comet (1877)
16. (1877) Les Indes noires; English translation: The Child of the Cavern (1877)
17. (1878) Un capitaine de quinze ans; English translation: Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen (1878)
18. (1879) Les Cinq Cents Millions de la Bégum; English translation: The Begum's Millions (1879)
19. (1879) Les Tribulations d'un chinois en Chine; English translation: Tribulations of a Chinaman in China (1879)
20. (1880) La Maison à vapeur; English translation: The Steam House (1880)
21. (1881) La Jangada; English translation: Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon (1881)
22. (1882) L'Ecole des Robinsons; English translation: Godfrey Morgan (1883)
23. (1882) Le Rayon vert; English translation: The Green Ray (1883)
24. (1883) Kéraban-le-têtu; English translation: Kéraban the Inflexible (1883-84)
25. (1884) L'Étoile du sud; English translation: The Vanished Diamond (1885)
26. (1884) L'Archipel en feu; English translation: The Archipelago on Fire (1885)
27. (1885) Mathias Sandorf; English translation: Mathias Sandorf (1885)
28. (1886) Un billet de loterie; English translation: The Lottery Ticket (1886)
29. (1886) Robur-le-Conquérant; English translation: Robur the Conqueror (1887)
30. (1887) Nord contre Sud; English translation: North Against South (1887)
31. (1887) Le Chemin de France; English translation: The Flight to France (1888)
32. (1888) Deux Ans de vacances; English translation: Two Years' Vacation (1889)
33. (1889) Famille-sans-nom; English translation: Family Without a Name (1889)
34. (1889) Sans dessus dessous; English translation: The Purchase of the North Pole (1890)
35. (1890) César Cascabel; English translation: César Cascabel (1890)
36. (1891) Mistress Branican; English translation: Mistress Branican (1891)
37. (1892) Le Château des Carpathes; English translation: Carpathian Castle (1893)
38. (1892) Claudius Bombarnac; English translation: Claudius Bombarnac (1894)
39. (1893) P’tit-Bonhomme; English translation: Foundling Mick (1895)
40. (1894) Mirifiques Aventures de Maître Antifer; English translation: Captain Antifer (1895)
41. (1895) L'Île à hélice; English translation: Propeller Island (1896)
42. (1896) Face au drapeau; English translation: Facing the Flag (1897)
43. (1896) Clovis Dardentor; English translation: Clovis Dardentor (1897)
44. (1897) Le Sphinx des glaces; English translation: An Antarctic Mystery (1898)
45. (1898) Le Superbe Orénoque; English translation: The Mighty Orinoco (2002)
46. (1899) Le Testament d'un excentrique; English translation: The Will of an Eccentric (1900)
47. (1900) Seconde Patrie; English translation: The Castaways of the Flag (1923)
48. (1901) Le Village aérien; English translation: The Village in the Treetops (1964)
49. (1901) Les Histoires de Jean-Marie Cabidoulin; English translation: The Sea Serpent (1967)
50. (1902) Les Frères Kip; English translation: The Kip Brothers (2007)
51. (1903) Bourses de voyage; English translation: Traveling Scholarships (n/a)
52. (1904) Un drame en Livonie; English translation: A Drama in Livonia (1967)
53. (1904) Maître du monde; English translation: Master of the World (1911)
54. (1905) L'Invasion de la mer; English translation: Invasion of the Sea (2001)

Apocryphal and posthumous novels

• (1885) L'Épave du Cynthia; English translation: The Waif of the Cynthia (1885), with André Laurie (pseudonym of Paschal Grousset), but actually the work of Grousset alone^[8]
• (1905) Le Phare du bout du monde; English translation: The Lighthouse at the End of the World (1923), modified by Michel Verne
• (1906) Le Volcan d'or; English translation: The Golden Volcano: The Claim on Forty Mile Creek and Flood and Flame (2 vols., 1962), modified by Michel Verne
• (1907) L'Agence Thompson and Cº; English translation: The Thompson Travel Agency: Package Holiday and End of the Journey (2 vols., 1965), written by Michel Verne
• (1908) La Chasse au météore; English translation: The Chase of the Golden Meteor (1909), modified by Michel Verne
• (1908) Le Pilote du Danube; English translation: The Danube Pilot (1967), modified by Michel Verne
• (1909) Les Naufragés du Jonathan; English translation: The Survivors of the 'Jonathan': The Masterless Man and The Unwilling Dictator (2 vols., 1962), modified by Michel Verne
• (1910) Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz; English translation: The Secret of William Storitz (1963), modified by Michel Verne
• (1919) L'Étonnante Aventure de la mission Barsac; English translation: The Barsac Mission: Into the Niger Bend and The City of the Sahara (2 vols., 1960), written by Michel Verne
• (1994) Paris au XXe siècle; English translation: Paris in the Twentieth Century (1996), written in 1863

Short story collections

• (1874) Le Docteur Ox; English translation Doctor Ox (1874)
• (1910) Hier et Demain; English translation Yesterday and Tomorrow (1965)

Short stories

• 1851 - "Un drame au Mexique" ("A Drama in Mexico", 1876)
• 1851 - "Un drame dans les airs" ("A Drama in the Air", 1852)
• 1852 - "Martin Paz" ("Martin Paz", 1875)
• 1854 - "Maître Zacharius" ("Master Zacharius", 1874)
• 1855 - "Un hivernage dans les glaces" ("A Winter Amid the Ice", 1874)
• 1864 - "Le Comte de Chanteleine" ("The Count of Chanteleine")
• 1865 - "Les Forceurs de blocus" ("The Blockade Runners", 1874)
• 1872 - "Une fantaisie du docteur Ox" ("Dr. Ox's Experiment", 1874)
• 1875 - "Une ville idéale" ("An Ideal City", 1965)
• 1879 - "Les Révoltés de la Bounty" ("The Mutineers of the Bounty", 1879)
• 1881 - "Dix Heures en chasse" ("Ten Hours Hunting", 1965)
• 1884 - "Frritt-Flacc" ("Frritt-Flacc", 1892)
• 1887 - "Gil Braltar" ("Gil Braltar", 1958)
• 1891 - "La Journée d'un journaliste américain en 2890" ("In the Year 2889", 1889)
• 1891 - "Aventures de la famille Raton" ("Adventures of the Rat Family", 1993)
• 1893 - "Monsieur Ré-Dièze et Mademoiselle Mi-Bémol" ("Mr. Ray Sharp and Miss Me Flat", 1965)

Apocryphal short stories

• 1910 - "L'Éternel Adam" ("The Eternal Adam", 1957), written by Michel Verne^[9]

Non-fiction works

• 1878 - Histoire des grands voyages et des grands voyageurs

Imitations by other writers

The Wizard of the Sea by Roy Rockwood is a clear copy of Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, apart from the first chapter(s). One or two other of Rockwood's titles also seem to (lesser) resemble some of Verne's, eg compare Five Thousand Miles Underground to Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

In 1999 German writer Dieter Lammerding has written a drama named Phantastische Reise zu Kapitän Nemo, merging two novels into one piece.

See also

About Jules Verne:

• Jules Verne museum in Nantes, France

Other science-fiction pioneers:

• Paschal Grousset, another French science-fiction author
• Emilio Salgari, Opéra-bouffean Italian science-fiction and adventure writer
• Osip Senkovsky, Polish-Russian journalist and entertainer
• Oshikawa Shunro, a Japanese science-fiction pioneer

Inspired by Jules Verne:

• The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne TV series
• Jules Verne ATV, an ATV named after Verne
• Steampunk, a style that took inspiration from Verne.
• Vernian Process, a music project inspired in name and theme.

References

Further reading

• William Butcher, Arthur C. Clarke (Introduction) (2006). Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography. ISBN 1-56025-854-3
• Peter Costello, Jules Verne: Inventor of Science Fiction. ISBN 0-684-15824-8
• Herbert R. Lottman (1997). Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography. ISBN 0-312-14636-1
• Jean Jules-Verne (1976). Jules Verne, A Biography. ISBN 0-8008-4439-4
• Philippe Melot et Jean-Marie Embs (2005).Le Guide Jules Verne.Les Editions de l'Amateur,Paris. ISBN 2-85917-417-6
• Ondřej Neff, Podivuhodný svět Julese Vernea (The Extraordinary World of Jules Verne), Prague, (1978)
• Gallagher, E. J. (1980). Jules Verne: A primary and secondary bibliography. Boston: MA, G. K. Hall & Co.
• Evans, A. B. (1988). Jules Verne rediscovered: Didacticism and the scientific novel. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
• Martin, A. (1990). The mask of the prophet: The extraordinary fictions of Jules Verne. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Lynch, L. (1992). Jules Verne. New York: Twayne Publishers.

External links

• Works by Jules Verne at Project Gutenberg
• Jules Verne at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Les Voyages Extraordinaires — list of Verne works Compiled by Dennis Kytasaari.
• Jules Verne's works: text, concordances and frequency list
• Zvi Har'El's Jules Verne Collection, including the Jules Verne Virtual Library, online sources of 51 of Jules Verne's novels translated into eight languages.
• The Jules Verne Collecting Resource Page, complete online sources, posters, cards, autographs, first edition covers, etc..
• Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography
• A Chronology of Jules Verne
• Biography of Jules Verne
• Jules Verne: A Reappraisal, by William Butcher
• "Jules Verne: Father of Science Fiction?", John Derbyshire, The New Atlantis, Number 12, Spring 2006, pp. 81–90. A review of four new Jules Verne translations from the "Early Classics of Science Fiction" series by Wesleyan University Press.
• Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography, by Herbert R. Lottman — a review
• A Jules Verne Centennial: 1905–2005
• Nantes Tourist Office official website (English)
• List of audio books at LibriVox by Jules Verne
• The Count of Chanteleine Wiki Translation Project (French → English)