Jules Verne was destined to always be ahead of his times
by at least a century: look at the numerical date on his birth
certificate!
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JULES VERNE was born on February 8, 1828 in Nantes, France.
He was the first child to Pierre and Sophie Verne. His father
was a strict attorney who expected his oldest son to follow in
his footsteps. As a boy he was adventurous and imaginative and
was fascinated by the concept of a floating island, inspired
by the flooding of his home on the Isle Feydeau. Jules had five
younger siblings, one of which was Paul, his closest brother
and best friend. When Jules turned nine, he and Paul went to
boarding school.
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He continued his adventurous dreams and one night,
he slipped out and boarded theCoralie for the Orient.
He thought he was going to turn all his fantasies into realities,
but the ship stopped at Paimboeuf for a last home call and his
father caught him and took him back. Jules then decided that
the best way to travel was in his mind.
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"Désormais, je ne voyagerai
plus qu'en rêve..."
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After his graduation, Jules Verne went to study law
in Paris like his father had hoped. But Jules repeatedly found
himself attracted to the profession of playwright. He found he
could write about all his own dreams and express his fantasies
without doing any real traveling. Here, he met Alexander Dumas.
Dumas was a rich and famous adventure playwright who owned his
own theatre. Jules slowly improved, and he wrote a play about
the hot-air balloon trips, so popular at the time. Dumas helped
Jules to produce his plays in the theatre. Jules' father was
unpleasantly surprised to find that his son was no longer studying
law and cut off his generous allowance. Though Jules did keep
writing, he soon went broke. He began to give in and started
work as a law clerk but he couldn't keep it up. Dumas kindly
gave Jules a secretarial position at the Lyric Theatre. Jules
could once more write freely and-five years later-became a full-time
writer.
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Awhile later, he traveled to the city of Amiens to
attend a friend's wedding. At the reception, Jules met Honorine
de Vione Morel, his future wife. She was already a widow at 26
with two children. Jules desperately wanted to marry her but
he had to get a job with a steady income in order to support
such a family. With the help of his future brother-in-law, he
managed to get a share in a broker's office to earn money. In
1857, he married Honorine. He still spent long hours writing
in the morning, then working at the stock exchange in the afternoons
for the next six years. In 1861 their first son was born. In
1863, he published Five Weeks in a Balloon and received
a contract for two books a year at 10,000 francs per year from
a publisher. He gave up the stock exchange and wrote for the
rest of his life.
Jules Verne soon published From the Earth to the Moon
and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Jules soon discovered
his gift for predicting the future. He wrote about going to the
moon, a feat then believed to be impossible but it came true.
Jules and his family moved and lived in a small village at the
mouth of the Somme River. He owned a boat called the Saint-Michel
and sailed the English Channel. It was on this very boat that
Jules Verne was inspired to write 20,000 Leagues under the
Sea, a book of Captain Nemo in his submarine Nautilus.
Jules had predicted the invention of the submarine. When
he wrote this, submarines had not been invented yet. Jules always
had a revolutionary touch in his stories, one that amazed millions.
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Philéas Fogg
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In 1872, Around the World in 80 Days became a newspaper
serial and was probably his most successful novel. People were
betting on the race against time that took place. This was made
into a stage production (with a real elephant!) and ran for two
years.
Unfortunately, his nephew Gaston suffered a mental breakdown
and was confined to his home. In 1886, he escaped with a loaded
gun. He went to his Uncle Jules house and shot him in the leg
during a state of agitation. Jules Verne walked with a cane the
rest of his life-but he kept writing.
Jules and Honorine lived together until he died on March 24th,
1905. He was buried in the Madeleine Cemetery on the outskirts
of Amiens. But he remains one of the best known writers of all
times. Though he seldom left France, he took his fans around
the world, under the sea, into the earth, up in hot-air balloons
and beyond into the distant moon.
Sara Lyon, CAC, Egypt, March 28, 2001
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