Jules Verne

Jules Verne is an internationally renowned French writer, known for his novels, poems, and plays. He is most well known for his series ‘Voyages Extraordinaires’, which include Journey to the Centre of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days. 

These novels are not just fun adventure stories, but exciting tales about the potential of the cutting edge technology of the latter half of the 19th century. They captured the imagination of readers of the day, and cemented him as one of the original fathers of science fiction. 

Meet Jules Verne 

Jules Verne was born in February 1828 in modern-day Nantes, France. He was sent to boarding school at a young age, where he met his teacher Madame Sambin, whose naval captain husband had disappeared several decades earlier. Her insistence to her students that her husband would one day reappear helped to influence several of Verne’s later stories, including The Mysterious Island. 

Verne began writing seriously at just 19, even though his father was adamant that Jules give up the hobby and take over the family law practice. Verne was therefore sent to Paris to study law, where he continued his side passion for writing, namely putting together plays. At the time, he was greatly influenced by Victor Hugo and could recite pages of his work. 

Even though Verne graduated with his law degree, his continued to write, eventually making friends with Alexandre Dumas and working together on plays. Around this time, he also began writing for a magazine. Yet it wasn’t until his father offered him a law practice that Verne made the decision to turn down the job and take up writing as a full-time career. 

In 1862, he met a man who agreed to publish his science fiction works. One of the first was ‘Five Weeks in a Balloon’, which was an international success and the start of an extremely successful collaboration between author and publisher, that would go on to last many decades.