Jules Verne biography

Verne Hits His Stride

In 1864, Verne published Edgar Allan Poe and His Works, Adventures of Captain Hatteras and Journey to the Center of the Earth. That same year, Paris in the Twentieth Century was rejected for publication, but in 1865 Verne was back in print with From the Earth to the Moon and Captain Grant’s Children.

Verne soon bought a ship, making his thirst for travel and adventure easier to quench,

and he and his wife spent a good deal of time sailing the seas. Verne's own adventures sailing to various ports, from the British Isles to the Mediterranean, provided plentiful fodder for his short stories and novels. In 1867, Hetzel published Verne's Geography of France and Her Colonies, and Verne went with his brother to Liverpool, to America. Although fascinated by America, Verne only stayed a week—managing a trip up the Hudson River to Albany, then on to Niagara Falls—although bits of his experiences would appear in several later works.

In 1869 and 1870, keeping up an unbelievable momentum, Hetzel published both volumes of Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Round the Moon and Discovery of the Earth, but rejected Uncle Robinson, an early version of The Mysterious Island (a revised version would appear in print three years later).

At this point, Verne could comfortably live on his writing, and his reputation was spreading across the globe.

Later Years

Jules Verne stayed prolific throughout the 1870s, writing The Adventures of a Special Correspondent (1872), The Survivors of the Chancellor (1875), Michael Strogoff (1876), and Dick Sand: A Captain at Fifteen (1878), among several others. After Verne's long run with personal and professional success, however, he would find the 1880s to be less kind.

In 1886, Verne's favorite nephew, Gaston, attempted to murder Verne. He fired two shots from a pistol, and one stuck Verne's shin, giving him a limp for the rest of his life. Gaston turned out to be sufferring from mental illness, and spent his life in a mental institution. A week after Verne was shot, Jules Hetzel died—an event that devastated the author. To add to his misery, Verne's mother died the following year.

Verne did, however, continue to travel and write, and Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon (1881), Robur the Conqueror (1886) and Master of the World (1904) are among his later publications. In 1905, while ill with diabetes, Verne died at his home in Amiens, France.

Legacy

In all, Verne wrote more than 70 books (most notably the 54 novels comprising the Voyages Extraordinaires), and conjured hundreds of memorable characters and countless innovations years before their time, including the submarine, space travel, terrestrial flight and deep-sea exploration.

His works of imagination, and the innovations and inventions contained within, have appeared in countless forms, from motion pictures to the stage, to television. Often referred to as the "father of science fiction," Jules Verne is the second most translated writer of all time (behind Agatha Christie), and his writings on scientific endeavors have sparked the imaginations of writers, scientists and inventors for over a century.

© 2013 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.