Jules

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Verne was born on 8 February 1828 on Île Feydeau, a small artificial island on the river Loire within Nantes, in the house of his maternal grandmother. His parents were Pierre Verne, an avoué originally from Provins, and Sophie Allotte de La Fuÿe, a Nantes woman from a local family of navigators and shipowners, of distant Scottish descent. In 1834, at age six, Verne was sent to boarding school where the teacher, Madame Sambin, was the widow of a naval captain who had disappeared some 30 years before. She often told students her husband was a shipwrecked castaway who would eventually return like Robinson Crusoe; the theme of the robinsonade would stay with Verne throughout his life. In 1836, he went to École Saint‑Stanislas, a Catholic school, where he quickly distinguished himself in mémoire (recitation from memory), geography, Greek, Latin, and singing. Legend has it that in 1839, at age 11, Verne secretly procured a spot as cabin boy on the three-mast ship Coralie intending to travel to the Indies, but his father caught him at Paimbœuf and made him promise to travel 'only in his imagination.' The legend is now known to be an exaggerated tale invented by his niece Marguerite Allotte de La Fuÿe, though it may have been inspired by a real incident.

In Their Own Story

In 1847, Verne's father sent him to Paris to begin law studies, partly to distance him from Nantes after his cousin Caroline married another man. While in Nantes preparing for his second year, Verne met Rose Herminie Arnaud Grossetière, a young woman one year his senior, and fell intensely in love. He wrote and dedicated some thirty poems to her, including La Fille de l'air, which describes her as 'blonde and enchanting / winged and transparent.' Her parents frowned on the match and married her to a rich landowner on 19 July 1848. The sudden marriage sent Verne into deep frustration; he wrote a hallucinatory letter to his mother, apparently composed in a state of half-drunkenness, describing his misery. This requited but aborted love affair seems to have permanently marked his work, with his novels including a significant number of young women married against their will—such as Gérande in Master Zacharius (1854), Sava in Mathias Sandorf (1885), and Ellen in A Floating City (1871). In July 1848, Verne left Nantes again for Paris, where he rented a furnished apartment at 24 Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie with another student. He arrived during the French Revolution of 1848, shortly before the election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte as president. While continuing law studies, he fed his passion for the theater, writing numerous plays. Verne later recalled: 'I was greatly under the influence of Victor Hugo... it was his dramatic work that most influenced me.' He also became good friends with a young composer, Aristide Hignard, and wrote several texts for Hignard to set as chansons.

Reader's Guide

Verne is considered an important author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His reputation was markedly different in the Anglosphere, where he had often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children's books, largely because of the highly abridged and altered translations in which his novels have often been printed. Since the 1980s, his literary reputation has improved. Jules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and above William Shakespeare. He has sometimes been called the 'father of science fiction,' a title that has also been given to H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback. In the 2010s, he was the most translated French author in the world. In France, 2005 was declared 'Jules Verne Year' on the occasion of the centenary of the writer's death. His work has been adapted for film and television since the beginning of cinema, as well as for comic books, theater, opera, music and video games.

Did You Know?

• Verne was born on a small artificial island on the river Loire within Nantes, which was later filled in and incorporated into the surrounding land area.
• At age six, his boarding school teacher was the widow of a naval captain who had disappeared 30 years before; she told students her husband would return like Robinson Crusoe, inspiring Verne's lifelong interest in robinsonades.
• Legend says Verne tried to run away to sea at age 11 as a cabin boy on the Coralie, but his father caught him and made him promise to travel 'only in his imagination'—though the story is now considered an exaggerated tale by his niece.
• Verne wrote some thirty poems to Rose Herminie Arnaud Grossetière, but her parents married her to a rich landowner, sending Verne into deep frustration that marked his later novels with recurring themes of women married against their will.
• Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and above William Shakespeare.