Jules Verne

French novelist

• Born: February 8, 1828
• Birthplace: Nantes, France
• Died: March 24, 1905
• Place of death: Amiens, France

Verne was a popular and prolific French novelist whose works were immediately translated into other major languages. He is credited with being the founder of the literary genre now known as science fiction, and his writings continue to be read and adapted to other media in the twenty-first century.

Early Life

One of five children, Jules Verne was the first son born to Pierre and Sophie Verne. Descended from a long line of merchants, seamen, and lawyers, it was expected that he would practice law. However, that expectation conflicted with his nature. The adventuresome Verne ran away from home at the age of eleven and attempted to set sail from Nantes on a departing ship. Caught and punished by his parents, Verne promised his mother that “from now on I’ll travel only in my imagination.” Only an average student, Verne was obedient to his father’s hopes, studied law, and tried his luck as an attorney. For him it was a boring and frustrating profession.

While studying in Paris, Verne had met and befriended the famed writer Alexandre Dumas, père, author of Les Trois Mousquetaires (1844; The Three Musketeers, 1846) and the “father of the historical romance.” Verne recalled his childhood fascination with “the literature of adventure,” such as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Johann Wyss’s Der schwietzerische Robinson (1812-1827; The Swiss Family Robinson, 1814, 1818, 1820). With the encouragement of Dumas, Verne left the security of his law practice to write. His initial play, Les Pailles rompues (1850; the broken straws), was successful at Dumas’s Théâtre Historique. Between 1851 and 1861, Verne penned some fifteen plays, most of which were never produced. For a short time, however, he was the secretary of the Théâtre Lyrique.

In 1856, while attending a wedding, Verne met Honorine Fraysee, a rich young widow with two children. It was a case of love at first sight. They were married on January 10, 1857, in a simple ceremony. In 1861, their son, Michel, was born. A happy union, the marriage lasted for forty-eight years.

By 1860 Verne began to regard himself as a professional failure. His writings were not earning much income, and he was accused of living off the income of a wealthy wife. Attempts to supplement his income by selling stocks failed. Because he had written some scientific articles, Verne attempted a piece on aeronautics and exploration. Africa was a popular subject because of the discoveries of adventurers such as Sir Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke. Verne proposed exploring the Dark Continent by balloon. This scientific text was repeatedly rejected by publishers. P. J. Hetzel (who wrote under the pseudonym P. J. Stahl) advised Verne to rewrite it as fiction, suggesting that Verne could do for science what Dumas had done for history. Verne acted on the advice, and the firm of Hetzel and Company published Verne’s voyages extraordinaires (fantastic voyages) beginning with Cinq Semaines en ballon (1863; Five Weeks in a Balloon , 1876). The work was an immediate success, and Hetzel gave Verne a lifetime contract. His career as the creator of what would be called “science fiction” had begun.

Life’s Work

At the age of thirty-five, Verne had found his life’s work. In his remaining forty-two years, he would write more than sixty “scientific romances,” averaging two books per year and winning the reputation of the founder of science fiction. Verne drew on two of his major loves in the writing of science fiction: geography and science.

Though he seldom traveled, Verne was an avid reader of travel books and was recognized as an accomplished amateur geographer. Early in his career, he wrote a popular history of geographical exploration from the Phoenicians to the nineteenth century, La Decouverte de la terre (1878; The Discovery of the Earth , 1878), while he also collaborated on an illustrated geography of France. This fascination with a sense of place gave Verne the ability to provide intimate and convincing details in his novels, even those set in remote places in the Americas and the Pacific. Of seafaring stock and as an accomplished yachtsman, Verne filled his novels that were set on the oceans with compelling data that would normally be known only to a sailor. Verne’s feeling for locale was consistently persuasive.

Although he was not an inventor, Verne was an avid reader of scientific literature and had the gift to see the technological application of many of the great discoveries of the nineteenth century. Verne’s writing anticipated that of science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke in this respect, for there is always a hard core of scientific fact inside his fantastic tales. Late in his life, when someone dared to compare his writing to that of the British author H. G. Wells, Verne protested, insisting, “I do not see the possibility of comparison between his work and mine… his stories do not repose on very scientific bases.… I make use of physics. He invents.”

Verne’s novels predicted such twentieth century realities as helicopters in the skies, submarines under the seas, and space travel beyond the earth. In Les Cinq Cents Millions de la Bégum (1878; The Begum’s Fortune , 1880), Verne foretold both poison gases and rocket-propelled missiles, while in Face au drapeau (1896; For the Flag , 1897), he anticipated the use of high explosives (atomic energy) to terrorize international trade. Verne, in fact, helped create what he described in fiction. Simon Lake, one of the developers of the modern submarine, stated in his autobiography that “Jules Verne was in a sense the director-general of my life.” I. O. Evans, an authority on the history of science fiction, felt that “Verne and Wells may have done far more than to foretell such developments; they may actually have helped to bring them about.”

To Verne’s passion for geography and science, one must add his skill as a masterful storyteller. Though his characters could sometimes lecture the readers on science, the excitement of the tale being told prevented one from feeling that the novel was pedantic. In an early story, Verne took his readers through an Icelandic volcano deep into the heart of the planet in Voyage au centre de la terre (1864; A Journey to the Centre of the Earth , 1872). That novel had a German hero, Professor Hardwigg, who encountered water-dwelling dinosaurs—the plesiosaurus and the ichthyosaurus—at the earth’s core. Phileas Fogg, a proper English gentleman, was featured accomplishing a feat that many in the nineteenth century felt to be impossible, Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1873; Around the World in Eighty Days , 1873). Fogg won his wager that he could circumnavigate the planet in less than two and one-half months, and soon Verne’s fiction was being turned into fact by American and European reporters who attempted the task.

If one could go into the earth and around the earth, then why not leave the earth? An American hero designed a giant bullet-shaped projectile to be sent into space by the use of ordinary gunpowder from a site in Florida (coincidentally close to Cape Canaveral) in Verne’s classic De la terre à la lune (1865; From the Earth to the Moon , 1873), which was followed by the sequel Autour de la lune (1870; From the Earth to the Moon… and a Trip Around It , 1873). From the depths of space, Verne took his fans to the depths of the ocean with the mysterious hero (whose nationality is still disputed) Captain Nemo (which means “No Name”), the captain of the Nautilus, earth’s “first undersea ship,” in Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1869-1870; Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , 1873). This successful volume invited a sequel, L’Île mystérieuse (1874-1875; The Mysterious Island , 1875).

The influences on Verne’s writing were many and complex. He was a devoted Roman Catholic and an avid reader of scientific literature, but he was especially indebted to the American author Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s short story “Hans Phfall,” which described a balloon trip from the earth to the moon, inspired several of Verne’s aerial adventures. Verne’s novel Le Sphinx des glaces (1897; An Antarctic Mystery , 1898) was, in effect, an effort to try to complete Poe’s unfinished Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. From Poe, Verne learned about the power of plot and the necessity of fascination in effective writing. His indebtedness to Dumas was obvious, for both encouragement and insight into the development of character. Verne, in turn, was to influence many of the major writers of science fiction in the twentieth century, from H. G. Wells to Isaac Asimov.

Though Verne wrote during Victorian times, his attitude toward the role of science in the human future was not one of uncritical optimism. At times science was viewed as a source of liberation. In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo informed Professor Aronnax that under the seas “there only is independence.… There I recognize no masters! There I am free.” In Maître du monde (1904; Master of the World , 1914), Robur (“the conqueror”) haunted the skies in his new machine, a combination helicopter-submarine called the Terror, which would enable him to rule the world. By poetic justice, Robur’s Terror is destroyed by an act of nature, a thunderbolt. In later novels, Verne predicted that science would be used to produce instruments of mass destruction. As J. Kagarlitski noted, “Jules Verne, at the end of his life, arrived at the idea of the possible catastrophic consequences of the progress of science.”

Significance

As an author, Verne was a world celebrity within his own lifetime. As a French citizen, he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1870. As a resident of Amiens, he was active in municipal government. As a lover of the sea, he was a skilled yachtsman who sailed to Britain, Scandinavia, the Baltic Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea until that activity was prevented in 1886 through a wound inflicted by a madman, his nephew Gaston, who shot Verne in the foot at point-blank range. Later in life, Verne, an authentic workaholic, suffered from arthritis, blindness in one eye caused by a cataract, and increasing struggles with depression. His death on March 24, 1905, deprived the planet of a prophet and master storyteller, but Verne’s ability to entertain continued, for a number of successful motion pictures have been based on his movies, including Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1916, 1954, and 1997), The Mysterious Island (1929 and 1961), From the Earth to the Moon (1958), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), and, perhaps the most popular of all, Around the World in Eighty Days (1956 and 2004).

Verne’s Novels

1863

• Cinq Semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1876)

1864

• Voyage au centre de la terre (A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 1872)

1864-1866

• Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras (2 volumes; includes Les Anglais au pôle nord, 1864 [English at the North Pole, 1874], and Le Désert de glace, 1866 [Field of Ice, 1876]; also as Adventures of Captain Hatteras, 1875)

1865

• De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon, 1873)

1867-1868

• Les Enfants du capitaine Grant (3 volumes; Voyage Round the World, 1876-1877; also as Captain Grant’s Children, includes The Mysterious Document, Among the Cannibals, and On the Track)

1869-1870

• Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, 1873)

1870

• Autour de la lune (From the Earth to the Moon…and a Trip Around It, 1873)

1871

• Une Ville flottante (A Floating City, 1876)

1872

• Aventures de trois russes et de trois anglais (Meridiana: The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa, 1873)

1873

• Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days, 1873)

1874, 1876

• Docteur Ox (in Dr. Ox’s Experiment and Master Zacharius, 1876)

1874-1875

• L’Île mystérieuse (3 volumes; includes Les Naufrages de l air, L Abandonné, and Le Secret de l’île; The Mysterious Island, 1875)

1875

• Le Chancellor (Survivors of the Chancellor, 1875)

1876

• Michel Strogoff (Michael Strogoff, 1876-1877)

1877

• Hector Servadac (English translation, 1878)

1878

• Les Cinq Cents Millions de la Bégum (The Begum’s Fortune, 1880)

1880

• La Maison à vapeur (The Steam House, 1881; includes The Demon of Cawnpore and Tigers and Traitors)

1881

• La Jangada (2 volumes; The Giant Raft, 1881; includes Down the Amazon and The Cryptogram)

1885

• Mathias Sandorf (English translation, 1886)

1886

• Robur le conquerant (The Clipper of the Clouds, 1887)

1889

• Sans dessus dessous (The Purchase of the North Pole, 1891)

1892

• Le Château des Carpathes (The Castle of the Carpathians, 1893)

1895

• L’île à hélice (Floating Island, 1896; also as Propeller Island, 1965)

1896

• Face au drapeau (For the Flag, 1897)

1897

• Le Sphinx des glaces (An Antarctic Mystery, 1898; also as The Mystery of Arthur Gordon Pym)

1898

• Le Superbe Orénoque (The Mighty Orinoco, 2002)

1901

• Le Village aérien (The Village in the Treetops, 1964)

1904

• Maître du monde (Master of the World, 1914)

1905

• L’Invasion de la mer (Invasion of the Sea, 2001)

1908

• La Chasse au météore (The Chase of the Golden Meteor, 1909)

1909

• Les naufrages du Jonathan, (The Survivors of the Jonathan, 1962)

1910

• Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz (The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz, 1965)

1920

• L’étonnante Aventure de la mission Barsac (2 volumes; Into the Niger Bend, 1919; The City in the Sahara, 1965)

1994

• Paris au XXe siècle (Paris in the Twentieth Century, 1996)

Bibliography

Born, Franz. Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented the Future. Translated by Juliana Biro. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964. This is a readable and reliable account of the novelist, presenting him as a “secular prophet” who anticipated the life-altering inventions of the twentieth century.

Costello, Peter. Jules Verne: Inventor of Science Fiction. New York: Scribner, 1978. This brief study relates Verne to the literary genre that he is credited with inventing and perfecting, though Verne regarded himself simply as an author of “scientific romances,” not “scientific fiction.”

Evans, Arthur B., and Ron Miller. “Jules Verne, Misunderstood Visionary.” Scientific American 276, no. 4 (April, 1997): 92. An overview of Verne’s life and literary ambitions. Describes how a newly discovered novel, Paris in the Twentieth Century, expressed Verne’s concerns about the dangers of technology.

Evans, Idrisyn Oliver. Jules Verne and His Work. New York: Twayne, 1966. This solid introduction to the “fictional futurist” and his writings by a respected Verne scholar of the post-World War II era is concise and nicely illustrated.

Lottman, Herbert R. Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. This scholarly examination of Verne is thoroughly researched and will remain definitive for some time. The exposition is lengthy and is enriched with an extensive bibliography.

Stewart, Doug. “Prescient and Accounted For.” Smithsonian 35, no. 12 (March, 2005): 103. Describes how Verne’s hometown planned to celebrate the centenary of his death. Analyzes Verne’s writings, arguing they are more complex, skeptical, and political than is commonly believed.

Taves, Brian, Stephen Michaluk, Jr., and Edward Baxter. The Jules Verne Encyclopedia. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1996. This is a must. In spite of the brevity, the reader is introduced to the key facts, figures, and events of the Jules Verne corpus. It will prove invaluable when used in conjunction with a good biography while reading Verne’s works.

Teeters, Peggy. Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented Tomorrow. New York: Walker, 1992. This work is popular, fast-paced, concise, and readable, and it provides a good starting point for the reader who needs a quick introduction to Verne.

Unwin, Timothy. “Jules Verne: Negotiating Change in the Nineteenth Century.” Science Fiction Studies 32, no. 1 (March, 2005): 5. Examines how Verne’s literature described the nineteenth century reaction to the positive and negative aspects of technology. This is one of several articles about Verne included in this issue of Science Fiction Studies, which commemorates the centenary of the author’s death.

Verne, Jean Jules. Jules Verne: A Biography. Translated and abridged by Roger Greaves. New York: Taplinger, 1976. It is not often that one is afforded a view of an author from within his own family. Verne’s grandson, a distinguished judge, insisted that his grandfather’s philosophy was that “the world needed not new science, but new morals.” Insightful and succinct.