europeana

Jules Verne, the master of science fiction

Today we are cel­e­brat­ing the 184^th birth­day of Jules Verne, one of the found­ing fathers of sci­ence fic­tion and the sec­ond most trans­lated author in the world after Agatha Christie.

Born in the har­bour city of Nantes, France, the young Jules Verne spent a great amount of time watch­ing the ships nav­i­gate the Loire River. This expe­ri­ence sparked the boy’s inter­est for travel and adven­tures, which he would later express through his writing.

His lit­er­ary career started with writ­ing liberetti for operettas. In 1863, he pub­lished his first full-length book En luft­bal­longsresa genom Afrika (A Hot Air Bal­loon trip through Africa). How­ever, the suc­cess came to him after meet­ing Pierre-Jules Het­zel, one of the more impor­tant French pub­lish­ers of the 19^th cen­tury.  Het­zel sig­nif­i­cantly influ­enced Verne’s writ­ings. He cor­rected the sto­ries, gave invalu­able advice on how to rewrite them and infused them with optimism.

Their fruit­ful part­ner­ship saw the pub­li­ca­tion of Verne’s most pop­u­lar novels:

Cinq semaines en bal­lon (Five Weeks in a Bal­loon) in 1863;

Cinq semaines en ballon

Voy­age au cen­tre de la Terre (Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth) in 1864;

Voy­age au cen­tre de la terre

De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon) in 1865;

De la Terre à la Lune

Les Enfants du cap­i­taine Grant (Cap­tain Grant’s Chil­dren) in 1867–1868;

Les Enfants du Cap­i­taine Grant

Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thou­sand Leagues Under the Sea) in 1869;

Vingt mille lieues sous les mers

Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days) in 1872.

Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours

Dis­cover more on Euro­peana and explore the unknown with Jules Verne’s books.