Who wrote Jules Verne. Jules Verne - biography, information, personal life

Jules Gabriel Verne (February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905) was a world-famous and incredibly popular French writer and geographer. He is considered the founder of the literary genre of science fiction. He is a member of the French Geographical Society, and his books have long become a world literary heritage.

Childhood

Jules Verne was born on February 8 in the French city of Nantes. His father was a hereditary lawyer, whom a good half of the small town knew, and his mother, a Scot by birth, taught literature at school for some time. Many bibliographers believe that it was she who instilled in young Jules a love of literature, since his father saw in him only another representative of a generation of good lawyers.

Finding himself between two very different people - a lawyer father and an art-loving mother - Vern, from childhood, doubted what he wanted to become. While studying at school, for some time he was fond of reading French literature, which his mother selected for him. But when he got a little older, he took up law, like his father, and moved to Paris.

In the future, he will even write a short autobiographical story about this, which will talk about his childhood, his mother’s desire to make him a man of art and his father’s thirst for teaching the boy the basics of law. However, this manuscript, created by Verne in a hurry, will be read only by his closest people, after which it will be lost forever as a result of the move.

Youth and the beginning of a writing career

Having reached adulthood, Jules Verne decides to leave his family, which at that time was beginning to make him very nervous with its pressure regarding his future profession, and move to Paris to further study law.

Having learned about this, the father secretly tries several times to help his son enter law school, but every time Jules Verne finds out about this, he deliberately fails the exams and moves to another university. Ultimately, in Paris there remains only one faculty of law, which Jules dreamed of at that time.

He successfully enrolls and has been studying at the department for six months, after which he accidentally finds out that his teacher is an old and very good friend of his father, who studied with him at the same school. Realizing that dad will try to “clear” the way for him all his life and not wanting to do anything at the expense of his parents, Vern has a serious quarrel with his family and leaves the legal department.

Several years after this go worse for Jules than he had planned. He tries to stay as far away from jurisprudence as possible, however, having knowledge only in this area, he spends all his last money and is forced to live on the street for six months. At the same time, Jules Verne, trying to remember his mother’s lessons about art, begins to compose his first work.

His friend, whom they met at the faculty, seeing his friend’s plight, decides to help and arranges a meeting for him with the head of the Historical Theater in Paris. Having studied the work, he begins to understand that the talent of Jules Verne should be seen by the general public, so after a couple of months the production of “Broken Straws” appears on the stage. After this, they learn about the aspiring writer and help him financially.

In the period from 1852 to 1854, Jules Verne collaborated with the theater. According to many bibliographers, this period can be considered the initial period in Verne’s writing career, when he was just mastering a new style for himself and realizing himself in this field. During this period, several stories, librettos and comedies by the author were published, many of which became successful theatrical productions in different periods of time.

Achieving success and most famous works

Thanks to his collaboration with the Historical Theater, Jules Verne found himself as a writer, and from that moment he became imbued with the idea of ​​​​creating completely new adventure works in which he could describe something that other authors had never touched on before. That is why he creates his first cycle of works, which he unites under the general title “Extraordinary Travels.”

In 1863, the first work in the series, “Five Weeks in a Balloon,” was published in the “Magazine for Education and Recreation.” It receives the most positive ratings from readers, because the romantic relationship between the main characters, which is so attractive in the book, was supplemented by Verne with many science-fiction innovations, which was new for that time. Realizing that readers liked such books, Jules Verne continued to write in this style, as a result of which the cycle was replenished with such works as “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1864), “The Children of Captain Grant” (1867), “Around the World in 80 Days” "(1872), "The Mysterious Island" (1874).

After the release of Extraordinary Journeys, the name of Jules Verne was known to every resident of the country, and later - the whole world. Everyone could find something for themselves in his works. For some, these are wonderful and incredibly romantic storylines that connect the heroes, for others, the presence of well-described adventures, for others, the freshness of scientific ideas and views. Many literary critics rightly believe that Jules Verne was not just the founder of fantastic literature, but a man who believed that people would stop fighting and begin to acquire knowledge in the field of technology, and forget about wars between nations. This idea can be traced in all his works.

Personal life

The first and only wife of the world-famous writer was Honorine de Vian - an ordinary girl from a not very rich family. Jules Verne met her in the French town of Amiens, where he came at the invitation of his cousin for his wedding. A strong relationship began between the young people, and within six months Vern asked for Honorine’s hand.

The couple had a son, Michel. By the way, Jules Verne was not present at the birth, since at that time he was traveling around the Scandinavian countries, studying their life in order to write several new works. However, this did not prevent the writer from sincerely and with all his soul from loving the family who remained waiting for him in Paris.

Later, when Verne's son Michel grew up, he became seriously interested in cinematography. And it is thanks to him that today we can not only read, but also see some of the most successful works of Jules Verne, such as “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, “Five Hundred Million Begums” and many others.

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Biography, life story of Jules Verne

On February 8, 1828, in Nantes, France, a boy was born into the family of a lawyer, whose name Jules-Gabriel Verne became universally known far beyond the borders of France. The father of the future member of the French Geographical Society, the founder of science fiction, as well as the author of 66 novels, 30 plays, 20 novellas and short stories, was lawyer Pierre Verne. Since the family owned a law office, the father reasonably assumed that Jules, as befits the eldest child, would eventually become at his helm. The newborn's mother, née Allotte de la Fuyer, came from a very ancient family of shipbuilders and shipowners, many generations of whom lived and worked in Nantes, which for centuries was one of the largest ports in France.

The romance of the port city could not but influence the boy’s worldview. From early childhood, young Jules was attracted by sailing ships and travel to distant lands. In 1839, an 11-year-old boy attempted to make his dream come true by hiring himself as a cabin boy on the schooner Coralie, which was sailing to India. Fortunately, the father managed to protect his son from a rash act.

According to his father's ideas, Jules was supposed to become a lawyer, which happened when he graduated from the Paris School of Law. But, having received his diploma in 1849, Jules Verne chose to devote himself entirely to literature and theater, remaining in Paris. By this he doomed himself to a half-starved existence, since his father did not like this decision. However, this did not stop Jules from enthusiastically mastering a new field for himself, writing various literary works, ranging from comedies to opera librettos.

Intuition led the aspiring writer to the National Library, where, listening to lectures and scientific reports, he picked up a lot of interesting information on geography, navigation, and astronomy, although he had little idea of ​​what he needed it for. However, in 1851, the first creation with historical and geographical content was published - the story “The First Ships of the Mexican Fleet.” This work made a great impression on Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, who began to patronize Jules Verne. It is believed that it was Dumas who advised the young protégé to start writing adventure stories. However, Jules Verne, as always, acted in his own way, deciding to describe the entire globe, from nature to the customs of peoples, combining science and art in his novels.

CONTINUED BELOW

Since the implementation of this idea required a lot of time, in 1862 Jules Verne broke with the theater, which allowed him to complete his first adventure novel, “5 Weeks in a Balloon.” On the advice of Dumas, Jules turned to the Journal of Education and Entertainment, where this novel was published. The first collaboration with the magazine turned out to be so successful that its publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, seeing in the new author the talent of an “adventure” writer, entered into a 20-year contract with Jules Verne. According to its terms, the writer was obliged to publish 2 novels per year. This required a lot of effort, but at the same time it provided prosperity for the family of Jules Verne, who married in 1857. His chosen one was the widow Honorine de Vian, who at the time of her new marriage had two children. In 1961, they had their first and only child together, son Michel.

Further, as if trying to make up for the time lost in his youth, a number of masterpiece works come from the writer’s pen. In 1864, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” was published, in 1865 – “The Voyage of Captain Hatteras” and “From the Earth to the Moon”.

After finishing “The Children of Captain Grant” in 1868, Jules Verne decided to combine previously written works with future books. The result of this decision was the “Extraordinary Journeys” trilogy, which, in addition to “The Children of Captain Grant,” included “20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Mysterious Island,” published in 1870 and 1875, respectively.

By 1872, Jules Verne was finally tired of the bustle of the big city. The new place of residence was the provincial Amiens, located near Paris. From that time on, his life was reduced exclusively to literary creativity. According to biographers, the writer spent 15 hours a day at his desk. The practical result of this diligence was the extraordinarily successful novel Around the World in 80 Days.

In 1878, another world-famous adventure work, The 15-Year-Old Captain, was published, the theme of which - racial discrimination - was continued in the next novel, North vs. South, published shortly after the end of the American Civil War in 1887.

Jules Verne's life ended on April 24, 1905 in Amiens. The cause of death was diabetes. He left numerous works as a legacy to his descendants, which even today can provide an exciting pastime.

JULES VERNE
(1828-1905)

Jules Verne, the French science fiction writer, was and remained a faithful companion to his youth. His first novels brought him national recognition. As soon as the books of the French writer were published, they were immediately translated into many languages ​​and distributed throughout the world.

Jules Verne was in the prime of his creative powers, he had not yet completed half of his plans when his admiring contemporaries began to call him “global traveler”, “soothsayer”, “wizard”, “prophet”, “seer”, “inventor without a workshop” ( titles of articles that appeared during his lifetime). And he simply planned to outline the entire globe - the nature of various weather zones, flora and fauna, traditions and customs of all peoples of the planet. And not just outline it, as geographers do, but embody this plan in a multi-volume series of novels, which he called “Extraordinary Journeys.”

Jules Verne's hard work is striking in scale. The series includes sixty-three novels and two collections of novellas and short stories, published in 97 books. In full - about a thousand printed sheets or eighteen thousand book pages!

Jules Verne worked on “Extraordinary Journeys” for more than forty years (from 1862 to early 1905), but the publication of the entire series took more than half a century. During this period of time, generations of schoolchildren for whom he wrote his books changed. Jules Verne's later novels fell into the eager hands of the offspring and grandchildren of his first readers.

“Extraordinary Journeys” taken together is a universal geographical outline of the globe. If we distribute the novels by place of action, it turns out that 4 novels describe travel around the world, fifteen - to European countries, eight - to North America, eight - Africa, five - Asia, four - South America. America, 4 - the Arctic, 3 - Australia and Oceania, and one - Antarctica. Apart from the fact that in 7 novels the place of action is seas and oceans. Four novels make up the “Robinsonade” cycle - the action takes place on uninhabited islands. And in the end, in 3 novels the action takes place in interplanetary space. In addition, in almost all works - not only the “around the world” cycle - the heroes travel from country to country. It can be said without exaggeration that the pages of Jules Verne’s books are overwhelmed by sea waves, desert sand, volcanic ash, arctic whirlwinds, and cosmic dust. The setting in his novels is the earth, and not only the Earth, but the entire Universe. Geography and natural science coexist with technical and exact sciences.

Jules Verne's heroes always travel. By covering long distances, they try to gain time. The achievement of unusual speed requires the latest means of transportation. Jules Verne “improved” all types of transport from land to imaginary interplanetary ones. His heroes make high-speed cars, submarines and airships, explore volcanoes and the depths of the seas, get into hard-to-reach wilds, discover new lands, erasing the last “snow-white spots” from geographical maps. The whole world serves as a testing ground for them. At the bottom of the ocean, on an uninhabited peninsula, at the North Pole, in interplanetary space - wherever they are, their laboratory is everywhere, they work, act, argue, bring their daring dreams into reality.

Verne seems to combine several figures. He was the real founder of science fiction, based on scientific certainty and often on scientific foresight, was a delightful master of the adventure novel, and a passionate propagandist of science and its future achievements.

Emphasizing the search for scientific thought, he portrayed what he wanted as already achieved. Inventions that had not yet been implemented, models of devices that were being tested, machines that were only outlined in sketches, he presented in a finished, impeccable form. Hence the indescribable coincidence of the writer’s desires with the embodiment of similar thoughts in life. But he was neither a “soothsayer” nor a “prophet.” His heroes solved problems prompted by life itself - the rapid development of industry, transport, and communications. The novelist's scientific and technical fantasies almost never exceeded the ability to realize them in a higher degree of scientific and technological progress.

It is in these directions that the inquisitive idea of ​​the heroes of “Extraordinary Journeys” works. Inventors, engineers, builders, they build beautiful towns, irrigate deserts, find methods to accelerate the growth of plants using artificial climate devices, design electronic devices that allow them to create and hear over vast distances, dream of the practical use of the internal heat of the Earth, the energy of the sun, wind and sea ​​surf, about the ability to accumulate energy supplies in massive batteries. They are finding methods for prolonging life and replacing worn-out body organs with new ones, inventing color photography, sound cinema, an automatic calculating machine, synthetic food products, clothing made of glass fiber and many other amazing things that make human life and work easier and help him transform the world.

When Jules Verne wrote his books, the Arctic had not yet been conquered, the poles had not yet been discovered, Central Africa, Inland Australia, the Amazon basin, the Pamirs, Tibet, and Antarctica had practically not yet been explored. Jules Verne's heroes make geographical discoveries, ahead of the true ones.
The transformation of the world is the main thing in his work. The omnipotent mind knows nature. All four elements: earth, water, air, fire - will inevitably submit to people. Together, the world's population will transform and make the planet a better place:

It is from here that the optimistic pathos of the best works of Jules Verne begins. He made a novel of a new type - a novel about science and about endless abilities. His imagination became friends with science and became his inseparable companion. Fantasy, inspired by scientific research, turned into science fiction.

Together with the new novel, a new hero entered literature - a knight of science, a disinterested scientist, ready to perform a feat and make any sacrifice in the name of his own creative thoughts, for the sake of embodying enormous hopes. Not only the scientific and technical fantasies of Jules Verne are oriented towards the future, but also his heroes - the discoverers of new lands and the creators of mind-blowing machines. Time dictates its demands to the writer. Jules Verne caught these demands and responded to them with “Extraordinary Voyages.”

Finding your goal turned out to be more difficult than dedicating your life to achieving it. The lawyer's eldest son, Jules Verne, knew in his youth that the long-standing home tradition asked him to become a lawyer and then inherit his father's office. But the young man’s desire spread along with family expectations.
He grew up in the seaside town of Nantes, raved about the sea and ships, and even tried - he was eleven years old at the time - to escape to India, hiring himself as a cabin boy on the schooner Corals. But his inexorable father sends him after the lyceum to the Paris School of Law. The sea remains a bright dream, and the love of poetry, theater and music crushes the fortress of parental power. To please his father, he receives a diploma in law, but does not go to work in a law office in Nantes, but chooses the half-starved existence of a writer who survives on small earnings - he writes comedies, vaudevilles, dramas, composes the libretto of funny operas, and after each next misfortune he works with even greater passion. .

At the same time, his stingy curiosity and passion for the natural sciences force him to visit the National Library, lectures and scientific debates, make extracts from the books he read, not yet knowing what he will need this bunch of various references on geography, astronomy, navigation, history of technology and scientific discoveries.

At one point - this was in the mid-1850s - in response to his father’s entreaties to give up useless pursuits and return to Nantes, the guy decisively declared that he did not hesitate in his own future and would take a strong place in literature by the age of 35. He turned 27 years old. and a huge number of Jules Verne's prophecies were realized with great or minimal approximation, this first forecast turned out to be perfectly clear.
But the search still continued. Several stories written on a nautical theme, to which he himself did not attach great importance, although he later included them in his own large series, were milestones on the way to “Extraordinary Voyages.” Only at the turn of the 60s, making sure that he was now fully prepared, Jules Verne began to develop new spaces. It was a conscious artistic discovery. He discovered the poetry of science for literature. Breaking with everything that had once held him back, he told his friends that he had found his gold mine.

In the fall of 1862, Jules Verne finished his first novel. His longtime patron Alexandre Dumas advised him to contact Hetzel, an intelligent, experienced publisher who was looking for capable employees for the youthful “Journal of Education and Joy.” From the very first pages of the manuscript, Hetzel guessed that chance had brought to him the particular writer who was lacking in children's literature. Hetzel quickly read the novel, made his comments and gave it to Jules Verne for revision. Within two weeks the manuscript was returned in a revised form, and in 1863 the novel was published.
The title itself - “5 weeks in a hot air balloon” - could not go unnoticed. The success eclipsed all expectations and marked the birth of a “novel about science”, in which the most interesting adventures are mixed with the popularization of knowledge and the substantiation of various hypotheses. Thus, already in this first novel about imaginary geographical discoveries in Africa, made from a bird's eye view, Jules Verne “constructed” a temperature-controlled balloon and accurately predicted the location of the then-undiscovered sources of the Nile.

The novelist entered into a long-term contract with him, agreeing to write three books a year. Now he could, without obstacles, without thinking about the next day, begin to implement countless plans. Etzel becomes his friend and adviser. In Paris they often see each other, and when Jules Verne goes to work at sea or cruises along the coast of France, locked in a “floating office” on board his own yacht “Saint-Michel”, they often exchange letters. Having belatedly discovered his current field, the writer publishes book after book, and what is not a novel is a masterpiece. The aerial fantasy is replaced by a geological one - “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1864). Later, an Arctic fantasy appears - “The Voyage and Adventures of Captain Hatteras” (1864-65).
While readers, together with a specific Hatteras, were slowly moving towards the North Pole on the pages of the “Journal of Education and Joy,” Jules Verne created a cosmic fantasy - “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865), postponing the continuation (“Around the Moon”), since he had to finish the novel about a trip around the world, “The Adventures of Robert Grant,” which had long been conceived and announced in the magazine, was on time. Now the novel without any fiction has grown to 3 volumes! Jules Verne changed the title in the manuscripts, and it became final - “Children of Captain Grant.”

Working once a day from dawn to dusk, from 5 am to 7 pm, he associates himself with a Percheron - a draft horse, which rests in its own team. The excess of unspent strength helps her cheerfully pull the overloaded cart upward until exhaustion.

Be sure to fulfill the terms of the contract - three books a year! — in the summer of 1866, seduced by the prospect of paying off old debts, Jules Verne took on an additional work, “Illustrated Geography of France,” commissioned by Hetzel. Using many sources, he manages to make a scrupulous description of two departments in a week, producing 800 lines - almost one and a half printed sheets a day. And this is not counting the main work on the third part of “The Children of Captain Grant,” one of the most delightful novels he ever created. Having handed over his 5th novel to the publisher, Jules Verne decided to combine already written and not yet written works into a common series of “Extraordinary Journeys”.

Readers of the “Journal of Education and Joy” began circumnavigating the world from 1866 to 1868, when the novel “The Children of Captain Grant” was published as a separate edition and further added to the fame of Jules Verne. In this novel, a trip around the world is free of any fantasy. The action develops only according to the laws of internal logic, without any external springs. Children go in search of their missing father. their father is a Scottish patriot who did not want to come to terms with the fact that Great Britain enslaved Scotland. According to Grant, the interests of his homeland did not coincide with the interests of the Anglo-Saxons, and he decided to found a free Scottish colony on one of the Pacific islands. Or he dreamed that this colony would one day achieve state government. independence, how did it happen with the United States? The independence that India and Australia will inevitably win at some point? Naturally, he could think like that. And just imagine that the English government interfered with Captain Grant. But he picked up a crew and set sail to explore the large islands of the Pacific Ocean in order to find a suitable place to settle. Such an exposure. Then Lord Glenarvan, a like-minded person of Captain Grant, accidentally finds a document that explains his disappearance. And thus, the trip around the world is motivated by the freedom-loving zeal of the heroes. And then the damaged document will lead you down the wrong trail. Later, a know-it-all scientist will appear, in other words, the Frenchman Jacques Paganel, secretary of the Paris Geographical Society, a distinguished member of almost all geographical societies of the world. Through his anecdotal inattention, the plot intricacies will be further aggravated. Paganel is needed not only to revive the action. This man is a walking encyclopedia. He knows everything completely. In the recesses of his memory there are a huge number of facts that he will teach at every convenient occasion. But science should not be divorced from action. The novel is full of exciting adventures. And at the same time, it is geographical, it is a kind of interesting geography. The difficulties lay in ensuring that the cognitive data was not separated from the text, so that the action could not progress without it. In such cases, Jules Verne always came to the rescue with his breathtaking ingenuity.”

Among the characters in Extraordinary Journeys we find representatives of all human races, including most nations, dozens of nationalities, nationalities and tribes. A gallery of Jules Verne's images, including several thousand characters - the population of an entire town! - breathtakingly rich in ethnic composition. Here no other writer can compare with Jules Verne.

His hostility to racial prejudice is clearly evident even in the very choice of positive characters who, along with the Europeans and Yankees, represent the peoples of the colonial and dependent states. In order not to go far for examples, let us remember what nobility and sense of humanity the American red-skinned Thalcave is endowed with.

Jules Verne sympathized with the oppressed peoples. Exposure of slavery, colonial plunder, and destructive wars of aggression is the constant motif of “Extraordinary Journeys.” We also find satirical attacks against English colonial policy in “The Children of Captain Grant.” Australian boy Toline, who received a first grade in geography at school, is sure that the British belong to the entire globe. “Oh, that’s how they teach geography in Melbourne! - exclaims Paganel. - Just use your brains: Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Oceania - everything, the whole world belongs to the British! Damn it! Having been brought up this way, I understand why the Aborigines are subservient to the British.”

With the greatest indignation, the creator speaks about the so-called reservations - more remote and remote areas reserved for the indigenous population of Australia. “Having taken possession of the country, the British called for murder to help colonize. The mercilessness was indescribable. They behaved in Australia the same way as in India, where 5 million Indians died, just as in the Cape Region, where out of a million Hottentots only 100 thousand survived.”

The educational material concentrated in “The Children of Captain Grant,” as in other novels by Jules Verne, naturally would not have produced such memories if all these descriptions, reasoning, and excursions were not intertwined with the intentions and deeds of the heroes. People here are distinguished by unusual moral purity, physical and sincere health, purposefulness, concentration, and know neither hypocrisy nor calculation. Daredevils who believe in the success of their own business succeed in any, even the most difficult plan. A friend helps a friend out of trouble. The strong come to the aid of the weak. Friendship grows stronger from formidable trials. Villains are always exposed and punished for their crimes. Justice always triumphs, dreams always come true.

The images of fictional heroes are sculpted in such relief that they are remembered for a lifetime. Let's say, the same Jacques Paganel - who doesn't know this eccentric scientist? A science fanatic, a “walking encyclopedia,” he always intersperses stern reasoning with funny jokes and funny pranks. He has an ineradicable sense of humor. At the same time, he attracts with courage, kindness, and justice. Encouraging his own companions, Paganel does not cease to joke even in times of adversity, when it comes to life and death. In the novel this is the central figure. Without her, the whole composition would fall apart. Next to him is the Scottish patriot Glenarvan, who is doing everything incredible and impossible to find his freedom-loving compatriot, Captain Harry Grant. The young heroes of Jules Verne are also endowed with a strong and courageous character, which is revealed in action and tempered in the fight against cruel trials. One of them is Robert Grant. For the worthy son of a brave Scot, a sincere impulse is completely natural - to incur persecution by wolves in order to save his own friends from death.

In terms of circulation and number of translations, Verne is still one of the most popular writers. It is read wherever the printed word penetrates. In various countries, more and more new editions of Jules Verne’s works, plays, films, and entire television series based on the plots of “Extraordinary Journeys” are appearing.

The advent of the cosmic era marked the highest triumph of the writer, who foresaw artificial satellites and interplanetary flights from the Earth to the Moon.

When a Russian space rocket first transmitted a photo of the far side of the Moon to Earth, one of the “otherworldly” lunar craters was given the name “Jules Verne.” The Jules Verne crater is adjacent to the Sea of ​​Dreams...

As a small child, Jules dreamed of truly traveling around the world. He was born and lived in the town of Nantes, located at the mouth of the Loire River, which flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Huge multi-masted sailing ships arriving from various countries around the world stopped at the port of Nantes. At the age of 11, he secretly made his way to the port and asked one of the schooners to take him on board as a cabin boy. The captain gave his consent and the ship, together with young Jules, departed from the shore.

The father, being a well-known lawyer in the city, found out about this in time and set off on a small steamer in pursuit of the sailing schooner. He managed to remove his son and return him home, but he could not convince little Jules. He said he was now forced to travel in his dreams.

The boy graduated from the Royal Lyceum of Nantes, was an excellent student and was about to follow in his father’s footsteps. All his life he had been taught that the profession of a lawyer was very honorable and profitable. In 1847 he went to Paris and graduated from law school there. After receiving a lawyer's diploma, he took up writing.

Beginning of writing activity

The Nantes dreamer put his ideas on paper. At first it was the comedy “Broken Straws”. The work was shown to Dumas Sr. and he agreed to stage it in his own Historical Theater. The play became successful, and the author was praised.

In 1862, Verne completed work on his first adventure novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, and immediately took the completed manuscript to the Parisian publisher Pierre Jules Hetzel. He read the work and quickly realized that this was a truly talented person. A contract was immediately signed with Jules Verne for 20 years in advance. The aspiring writer undertook to submit two new works to the publishing house once a year. The novel “Five Weeks in a Balloon” quickly sold out and was a success, and also brought wealth and fame to its creator.

Real success and fruitful activity

Now Jules Verne could afford to fulfill his childhood dream - to travel. He bought the yacht Saint-Michel for this and set off on a long sea voyage. In 1862, he sailed to the shores of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. In 1867 he arrived in North America, crossing the Atlantic Ocean. While Jules was traveling, he constantly took notes, and upon returning to Paris he immediately returned to writing.

In 1864, he wrote the novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” then “The Travels and Adventures of Captain Hatteras,” followed by “From the Earth to the Moon.” In 1867, the famous book “The Children of Captain Grant” was published. In 1870 - “I pour 20,000 under water.” In 1872, Jules Verne wrote the book “Around the World in 80 Days” and it was the book that enjoyed the greatest success among readers.

The writer had everything one could dream of - fame and money. However, he was quite tired of noisy Paris and moved to quiet Amiens. He worked almost like a machine, getting up early at 5 am and writing non-stop until 7 pm. The only breaks were for food, tea and reading. He chose a suitable wife who understood him well and provided him with comfortable conditions. Every day the writer looked through a huge number of magazines and newspapers, made clippings and stored them in a file cabinet.

Conclusion

Throughout his life, Jules Verne wrote 20 stories, as many as 63 novels, and dozens of plays and short stories. He was awarded the most honorable award at that time - the Grand Prize of the French Academy, becoming one of the “immortals”. In the last years of his life, the legendary writer began to go blind, but did not stop writing. He dictated his works until his death.

Jules Gabriel Verne
(Verne, Jules Gabriel, 1828 - 1905)

2005 was a date celebrated by the literary and reading community not only in France, but also in many other countries. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the death of the great French writer Jules Gabriel Verne, whom millions of readers in various countries consider their idol.
Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828 in the city of Nantes, on one of the many islands in the Loire channel. Nantes is located several tens of kilometers from the mouth of the Loire, but it has a large port visited by many merchant sailing ships.
Pierre Verne, Verne's father, was a lawyer. In 1827, he married Sophie Allot de la Fuy, the daughter of nearby shipowners. Jules Verne's ancestors on his mother's side date back to a Scottish rifleman who entered the service of Louis XI's guard in 1462 and received the title of nobility for services rendered to the king. On the paternal side, the Vernes are descendants of the Celts who lived in ancient times in France. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Vernes moved to Paris.
Families at that time often had large families, and together with the first-born Jules, brother Paul and three sisters, Anna, Matilda and Marie, grew up in the Vernes' house.
Since the age of 6, Jules has been taking lessons from her neighbor, the widow of a sea captain. At the age of 8, he first entered the Seminary of Saint-Stanislas, then the Lyceum, where he received a classical education, which included knowledge of Greek and Latin, rhetoric, singing and geography. This is not his favorite subject, although he dreams of distant countries and sailing ships.
Jules tried to realize his dreams in 1839, when, secretly from his parents, he got a job as a cabin boy on the three-masted schooner Coralie, which was leaving for India. Fortunately, Jules’ father managed to board a local “pyroscaf” (steamboat), on which he managed to catch up with the schooner in the town of Pembef, located at the mouth of the Loire, and remove the would-be cabin boy from it. Having promised his father that he would never repeat anything like this again, Jules inadvertently added that from now on he would travel only in his dreams.
One day, Jules’s parents allowed Jules and his brother to ride on a pyroscope down the Loire to the place where it flows into the bay, where the brothers saw the sea for the first time.
“In a few jumps we descended from the ship and slid down the rocks covered with a layer of algae to scoop up sea water and bring it to our mouths...
“But it’s not salty at all,” I muttered, turning pale.
“Not salty at all,” the brother answered.
- We were deceived! – I exclaimed, and there was terrible disappointment in my voice.
What fools we were! At this time the tide was low, and from a small depression in the rock we scooped up Loire water! When the tide came in, the water seemed even saltier than we expected!”
(Jules Verne. Memoirs of childhood and youth)
Having received his bachelor's degree in 1846, Jules, who agreed - under great pressure from his father - to inherit his profession, began to study law in Nantes. In April 1847, he went to Paris, where he had to take exams for the first year of study.
He leaves his home without regret and with a broken heart - his love was rejected by his cousin Caroline Tronson. Despite numerous sonnets dedicated to his beloved and even a small tragedy in verse for the puppet theater, Jules did not seem to her a suitable party.
Having passed the exams at the Faculty of Law for 1847, Jules returned to Nantes. He is irresistibly attracted to the theater, and he writes two plays (“Alexander VI” and “The Gunpowder Plot”), read in a narrow circle of acquaintances. Jules understands well that the theater is, first of all, Paris. With great difficulty, he obtains permission from his father to continue his studies in the capital, where he goes in November 1848.
Jules settles down in Paris on the Rue Ancienne-Comédie with his Nantes friend Edouard Bonamy. In 1949, he received a law licentiate degree and could work as a lawyer, but was in no hurry to get a job in a law office and, moreover, was not eager to return to Nantes.
He enthusiastically attends literary and political salons, where he meets many famous writers, including the famous Alexandre Dumas the Father. He is intensively engaged in literature, writing tragedies, vaudevilles and comic operas. In 1948, 4 plays appeared from his pen, the next year - 3 more, but all of them did not reach the stage. Only in 1850 was his next play, Broken Straws, able to see (with the help of the elder Dumas) the stage lights. In total, 12 performances of the play took place, bringing Jules a profit of 15 francs.
This is how he talks about this event: “My first work was a short comedy in verse, written with the participation of Alexandre Dumas the son, who was and remained one of my best friends until his death. It was called “Broken Straws” and was staged on the stage of the Historical Theater, owned by Dumas the Father. The play had some success, and on the advice of Dumas Sr. I sent it to print. “Don't worry,” he encouraged me. - I give you a full guarantee that there will be at least one buyer. That buyer will be me!” [...] It soon became clear to me that dramatic works would not give me either fame or a means of livelihood. In those years I lived in an attic and was very poor.”
(From an interview with Jules Verne)

How limited the means of subsistence that Verne and Bonamy had at their disposal can be imagined from the fact that they had only one evening dress, and therefore they took turns going out to social functions. When one day Jules could not resist and bought a collection of plays by Shakespeare, his favorite writer, then he was forced to fast for three days, since he had no money left for food.
As his grandson Jean Jules-Verne writes in his book about Jules Verne, during these years Jules had to seriously worry about earnings, since he could not count on his father’s income, which was quite modest for those times. He gets a job in a notary's office, but this job does not leave him time to write, and he soon leaves it. For a short time, he gets a job as a bank clerk, and in his free time he tutors law students.
Soon the Lyric Theater opens in Paris, and Jules becomes its secretary. His service in the theater allowed him to earn extra money for the then popular magazine Musée des Families, which published his story “The First Ships of the Mexican Fleet” (later called “Drama in Mexico”) in 1851.
The next publication on a historical topic took place in the same year in the same magazine, where the story “Travel in a Balloon” appeared, better known as “Drama in the Air,” under which it was published in 1872 in the collection “Doctor Ox.”
Jules Verne continues to build on the success of his first historical and geographical works. In 1852, he published the story "Martin Paz", which takes place in Peru. Then, in the Musée des Families, the fantastic short story “Master Zacharius” (1854) and the long story “Wintering in the Ice” (1855) appear, which, not without reason, can be considered the prototype of the novel “The Travels and Adventures of Captain Hatteras.” Thus, the range of topics preferred by Jules Verne is gradually becoming more precise: travel and adventure, history, exact sciences, and finally, fantasy. And yet, young Jules continues to stubbornly waste his time and energy on writing mediocre plays... Throughout the 50s, librettos of comic operas and operettas, dramas, comedies came out from his pen one after another... From time to time, some of the They appear on the stage of the Lyric Theater (“Blind Man’s Bluff”, “Marjolena’s Companions”), but it is impossible to exist on these odd jobs.
In 1856, Jules Verne was invited to his friend's wedding in Amiens, where he met the bride's sister. This is the beautiful twenty-six-year-old widow Honorine Morel, née de Vian. She recently lost her husband and has two daughters, but this does not stop Jules from becoming infatuated with the young widow. In a letter home, he talks about his intention to get married, but since the starving writer cannot give his future family sufficient guarantees of a comfortable life, he discusses with his father the possibility of becoming a stockbroker with the help of his fiancée's brother. But... to become a shareholder of the company, you need to deposit a round sum of 50,000 francs. After a short resistance, the father agrees to help, and in January 1857, Jules and Honorine tie their destinies in marriage.
Vern works a lot, but he has time not only for his favorite plays, but also for traveling abroad. In 1859, he made a trip to Scotland with Aristide Ignard (the author of the music for most of Verne’s operettas), and two years later he went with the same companion on a trip to Scandinavia, during which he visited Denmark, Sweden and Norway. During these same years, several new dramatic works by Verne saw the theatrical stage - in 1860, the Lyric Theater and the Buff Theater staged the comic operas "Hotel in the Ardennes" and "Mr. Chimpanzee", and the following year at the Vaudeville Theater with success The comedy in three acts “Eleven Days of Siege” took place.
In 1860, Verne met one of the most unusual people of that time. This is Nadar (as Gaspard-Felix Tournachon briefly called himself), the famous aeronaut, photographer, artist and writer. Verne was always interested in aeronautics - just remember his “Drama in the Air” and an essay on the work of Edgar Allan Poe, in which Verne devotes a lot of space to the “aeronautical” short stories of the great writer he revered. Obviously, this influenced the choice of theme for his first novel, which was completed by the end of 1862.
Probably the first reader of the novel “Five Weeks in a Balloon” was Alexandre Dumas, who introduced Verne to the then famous writer Brichet, who, in turn, introduced Verne to one of the largest Parisian publishers, Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Etzel, who was about to found a magazine for teenagers (later to become widely known as the Magazine of Education and Entertainment), immediately realized that Verne's knowledge and abilities were much in line with his plans. After minor revisions, Etzel accepted the novel, publishing it in his journal on January 17, 1863 (according to some sources - December 24, 1862). In addition, Etzel offered Verne permanent cooperation, signing a 20-year agreement with him, according to which the writer undertook to transfer to Etzel the manuscripts of three books annually, receiving 1900 francs for each volume. Now Vern could breathe easy. From now on, he had, although not too large, a stable income, and he had the opportunity to engage in literary work without thinking about how he would feed his family tomorrow.
The novel “Five Weeks in a Balloon” appeared extremely timely. First of all, the general public these days was captivated by the adventures of John Speke and other travelers who were looking for the sources of the Nile in the unexplored jungles of Africa. In addition, these years saw the rapid development of aeronautics; suffice it to say that, in parallel with the successive issues of Verne’s novel appearing in Etzel’s magazine, the reader could follow the flights of Nadar’s giant (it was called “Giant”) balloon. Therefore, it is not surprising that Verne’s novel achieved incredible success in France. It was soon translated into many European languages ​​and brought the author international fame. Thus, already in 1864, its Russian edition was published under the title “Air Travel Through Africa.”
Subsequently, Etzel, who soon became a close friend of Jules Verne (their friendship continued until the publisher’s death), always showed exceptional nobility in financial relations with the writer. Already in 1865, after the publication of Jules Verne's first five novels, his fee was increased to 3,000 francs per book. Despite the fact that, under the terms of the agreement, the publisher could freely dispose of the illustrated editions of Verne’s books, Etzel paid the writer compensation in the amount of five and a half thousand francs for the 5 books published by that time. In September 1871, a new agreement was signed, according to which Verne agreed to transfer to the publisher not three, but only two books annually; the writer's fee was now 6,000 francs per volume.
Here we will not only not dwell on the content of everything that was written by Jules Verne over the next 40-odd years, but we will not even list the names of his numerous - about 70 - novels. Instead of the bibliographic information that can be found in the books and articles of E. Brandis, K. Andreev and G. Gurevich dedicated to Jules Verne, as well as in the biography translated into Russian written by the writer’s grandson Jean Jules-Verne, we will dwell in more detail on the originality of the creative the writer’s method and his views on science and society.
There is a very widespread opinion, a kind of myth, that Jules Verne expressed in his works “man’s shock at the power of technology, hopes for its omnipotence,” as his biographers usually noted. Sometimes, however, they were reluctant to admit that towards the end of his life the writer began to look more pessimistically at the ability of science and technology to make humanity happy. Jules Verne's pessimism in the last years of his life was explained by his poor health (diabetes, loss of vision, a wounded leg that caused constant suffering). Often, his long story entitled “Eternal Adam,” written at the end of the 19th century, but first published after the writer’s death in the collection “Yesterday and Tomorrow,” published in 1910, was mentioned as evidence of the writer’s gloomy view of the future of humanity.
An archaeologist from the distant future discovers traces of a vanished highly developed civilization, destroyed thousands of years ago by the ocean that flooded all the continents. Only on the land that rose from the Atlantic after the disaster, seven people survived, laying the foundation for a new civilization that had not yet reached the level of the previous one. Continuing the excavations, the archaeologist discovers traces of an even more ancient lost culture, apparently created once by the Atlanteans, and is bitterly aware of the eternal cycle of events.
The writer’s grandson Jean Jules-Verne defines the main idea of ​​the story this way: “...Man’s efforts are in vain: they are hampered by his fragility; everything is transitory in this mortal world. Progress, like the universe, seems limitless to him, while a barely noticeable tremor of the thin earth’s crust is enough to make all the achievements of our civilization in vain.”
(Jean Jules Verne. Jules Verne)
Jules Verne went even further in his novel, The Amazing Adventures of the Barsac Expedition, posthumously published in 1914, in which he shows how man uses scientific and technological advances for criminal purposes, and how he can use science to destroy what it has created.
Speaking about Jules Verne's views on the society of the future, one cannot help but say a few words about another of his novels, written in 1863, but discovered only at the end of the twentieth century and published in 1994. At one time, Etzel actively did not like the novel “Paris in the 20th Century”, and after lengthy discussions and debates it was abandoned by Jules Verne and thoroughly forgotten. The significance of the young Verne’s novel lies not in the visionary, sometimes surprisingly accurately guessed technical details and scientific discoveries; the main thing in it is the image of the future society. Jules Verne skillfully identifies the features of contemporary capitalism and extrapolates them, bringing them to the point of absurdity. He foresees the nationalization and bureaucratization of all layers of society, the emergence of strict control not only over the behavior, but also over the thoughts of citizens, thus predicting the emergence of a state of police dictatorship. “Paris in the 20th Century” is a warning novel, a real dystopia, one of the first, if not the first, among the famous dystopias of Zamyatin, Platonov, Huxley, Orwell, Efremov and others.
Another myth about the writer’s life says that he was an inveterate homebody, and very rarely and reluctantly made small trips. In fact, Jules Verne was a tireless traveler. We have already mentioned above several of his travels in 1859 and 1861 to Scotland and Scandinavia; He made another exciting journey in 1867, visiting North America, where he visited Niagara Falls.
On his yacht “Saint-Michel III” (Verne had three yachts under this name - from a small boat, a simple fishing longboat, to a real two-masted yacht 28 meters long, equipped with a powerful steam engine), he circumnavigated the Mediterranean Sea twice, visited Portugal, Italy, England, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Holland, Scandinavia.
The observations and impressions gained during these travels were constantly used by the writer in his novels. Thus, the impressions of a trip to Scotland are clearly visible in the novel “Black India,” which tells about the life of Scottish miners; travels around the Mediterranean provided the basis for vivid descriptions of events taking place in North Africa. As for the voyage to America on the Great Eastern, an entire novel called “The Floating City” is dedicated to it.
Jules Verne really did not like being called a predictor of the future. The science fiction writer explained that the descriptions of scientific discoveries and inventions contained in the novels of Jules Verne are gradually coming true: “These are simple coincidences, and they are explained very simply. When I talk about any scientific phenomenon, I first examine all the sources available to me and draw conclusions based on many facts. As for the accuracy of the descriptions, in this regard I am indebted to all sorts of extracts from books, newspapers, magazines, various abstracts and reports, which I have prepared for future use and are gradually replenished. All these notes are carefully classified and serve as material for my stories and novels. Not a single book of mine was written without the help of this card index. I carefully look through more than twenty newspapers, diligently read all the scientific reports available to me, and, believe me, I am always overcome with a feeling of delight when I learn about some new discovery...”
(From an interview with Jules Verne)
Throughout his life, the writer was distinguished by an enviable work ethic, perhaps no less fantastic than the exploits of his heroes. In one of the articles about Jules Verne, an excellent expert on his life and work, E. Brandis, gives the writer’s story about his methods of working on manuscripts: “... I can reveal the secrets of my literary cuisine, although I would not dare recommend them to anyone else. After all, every writer works according to his own method, choosing it more instinctively than consciously. This is, if you like, a question of technology. Over many years, habits are developed that are impossible to break. I usually start by selecting from the card index all the extracts related to a given topic; I sort them, study them and process them in relation to the future novel. Then I do preliminary sketches and outline chapters. After that, I write a draft in pencil, leaving wide margins—half a page—for corrections and additions. But this is not a novel yet, but only the frame of a novel. In this form, the manuscript arrives at the printing house. In the first proof, I correct almost every sentence and often rewrite entire chapters. The final text is obtained after the fifth, seventh or, sometimes, ninth proofreading. Most clearly I see the shortcomings of my work not in the manuscript, but in the printed copies. Fortunately, my publisher understands this well and does not impose any restrictions on me...
Thanks to the habit of working at my desk every day from five in the morning until noon, I have been able to write two books a year for many years in a row. True, such a lifestyle required some sacrifices. So that nothing would distract me from my work, I moved from noisy Paris to calm, quiet Amiens and have been living here for many years - since 1871. You may ask why I chose Amiens? This city is especially dear to me because my wife was born here and here we once met. And I am no less proud of the title of municipal councilor of Amiens than of my literary fame.”
(E. Brandis. Interview with Jules Verne)
By the end of the 19th century, the writer was increasingly overcome by the ailments accumulated over his long life. He has hearing problems, severe diabetes, which has affected his vision - Jules Verne sees almost nothing. The bullet remaining in his leg after a ridiculous attempt on his life (he was shot by a mentally ill nephew who came asking to borrow money) barely allows the writer to move.
“The writer withdraws more and more into himself, his life is strictly regulated: getting up at dawn, and sometimes earlier, he immediately gets to work; At about eleven o'clock he goes out, moving extremely carefully, because not only is his legs bad, but his eyesight has also deteriorated greatly. After a modest dinner, Jules Verne smokes a small cigar, sitting in a chair with his back to the light, so as not to irritate his eyes, on which the shadow of the visor of his cap falls, and silently reflects; then, limping, he goes to the reading room of the Industrial Society...”
(Jean Jules Verne. Jules Verne)
In 1903, in one of his letters to his sister, Jules Verne complained: “I see worse and worse, my dear sister. I haven't had cataract surgery yet... In addition, I am deaf in one ear. So, I am now able to hear only half of the nonsense and malice that go around the world, and this consoles me a lot!
Jules Verne died at 8 a.m. on March 24, 1905, during a diabetic crisis. He is buried near his home in Amiens. A few years after his death, a monument was erected at his grave, depicting a science fiction writer with a hand stretched out to the stars.
Until 1914, books written by Jules Verne continued to be published (more or less significantly revised by his son Michel), successive volumes of Extraordinary Journeys. These are the novels “Invasion of the Sea”, “The Lighthouse at the End of the World”, “The Golden Volcano”, “The Thompson & Co. Agency”, “The Hunt for the Meteor”, “The Danube Pilot”, “The Shipwreck of Jonathan”, “The Mystery of Wilhelm Storitz”, “ The Amazing Adventures of the Barsak Expedition,” as well as a collection of short stories called “Yesterday and Tomorrow.”
In total, the “Extraordinary Journeys” series included 64 books - 62 novels and 2 collections of short stories.
If we talk about the rest of the literary legacy of Jules Verne, then it includes 6 more novels that are not included in “Extraordinary Journeys”, more than three dozen essays, articles, notes and stories not included in the collections, almost 40 plays, major popular science works “Illustrated Geography of France and its Colonies”, “Scientific and Economic Conquest of the Earth” and “History of Great Voyages and Great Travelers” in three volumes (“Discovery of the Earth”, “Great Travelers of the 18th Century” and “Travelers of the 19th Century”). The writer's poetic heritage is also great, numbering about 140 poems and romances.
For many years now, Jules Verne has been one of the most frequently published writers in the world. In the preface to the biography of Jules Verne, written by his grandson Jean Jules-Verne, Evgeniy Brandis reports: “During the years of Soviet power in the USSR, 374 books by J. Verne were published with a total circulation of 20 million 507 thousand copies” (data from the All-Union Book Chamber for 1977) . In terms of the number of translations into the languages ​​of the world, Jules Verne's books in the late 60s and early 70s were in third place, second only to the works of Lenin and Shakespeare (UNESCO Bibliographic Reference).
Let us add that a very complete collection of Verne’s works in 88 volumes began to be published in Russia by Soykin’s publishing house, starting in 1906, that is, immediately after the death of the writer.
In the 90s, several multi-volume collected works of Verne were published in Russian: in 6 (two editions), 8, 12, 20 and 50 volumes.
In many countries, societies of fans and lovers of Jules Verne have been created and are actively working. In 1978, a museum of the writer was opened in Nantes, and 2005, which marks the 100th anniversary of the writer’s death, was declared the year of Jules Verne in France.

Speaking about the amazing popularity of the great writer, one cannot fail to note the enduring significance of Jules Verne as one of the first science fiction writers in both French and world literature. The famous modern French science fiction writer Bernard Werber said: “Jules Verne is the pioneer of modern French science fiction.” Verne is rightly considered not only the creator of the “scientific” novel, but also one of its “founding fathers” along with the Englishman Herbert Wells and the American Edgar Allan Poe.
Shortly before the end, Verne wrote:
“My goal was to describe the Earth, and not only the Earth, but the entire Universe, because in my novels I sometimes took readers far from the Earth.”
It is impossible not to admit that the writer achieved his grandiose goal. The seven dozen novels written by Verne form a real multi-volume geographical encyclopedia containing a description of the nature of all the continents of the Earth. Verne also fulfilled his promise to take his reader far from the Earth, since of the almost two dozen of his novels that are rightfully classified as science fiction, there are such as “From the Gun to the Moon” and “Around the Moon,” which make up the cosmic “lunar” duology, as well as another space novel, “Hector Servadac,” about a journey through the solar system on a fragment of land knocked out of the Earth by a colliding comet. A fantastic plot is also present in the novel “Upside Down,” which deals with an attempt to straighten the tilt of the earth’s axis. Not without reason, the geological epic “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, two novels about the conqueror of the air element Robur, the novel “The Mystery of Wilhelm Storitz” about the adventures of the invisible man and many others are classified as science fiction.
However, the peculiar feature of Verne's fiction is that it is usually not very fantastic; for example, the writer never said a word about the meeting of earthlings with aliens, did not touch upon the problem of time travel and many other science fiction topics that later became classic. In the mid-twentieth century, Verne's fiction would have been called short-range fiction, which in the USSR included the works of Okhotnikov, Nemtsov, Adamov and many other representatives of fiction officially recognized by the Soviet state. Even when putting forward a fantastic hypothesis, Verne tries to scientifically substantiate it, often with the help of mathematical calculations, or gives an explanation that does not contradict the basic laws of science. Thus, if Edgar Allan Poe ends his “Tale of the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym” with a mystical vision of a gigantic human figure in a shroud, embodying mortal horror, then in the true sequel written, the novel “The Ice Sphinx,” death for sailors carrying iron objects brings rock made of magnetic iron ore.
But it should be noted that much of the blame for such “mundaneity” of Verne’s fiction can be laid on Etzel, who always considered Verne’s main task to write not so much science fiction as popular science books, in which the adventure shell was skillfully combined with geographical or historical filling, to which Verne sometimes added elements of fantasy. According to Etzel, Verne's books were intended primarily for the education and entertainment of school-age readers. Fortunately, Jules Verne's magical talent allowed him to avoid creating boring and uninteresting popular science lectures on natural science or historical topics. A skillfully constructed, captivating adventure plot captivated the reader, imperceptibly drawing him into a world in which science and fantasy, adventure and literature, mystery and mathematical calculation were skillfully combined... Without this, it is unlikely that both children and adults would have read the writer’s books a hundred years after his death...
This is how the French critic Jacques Chenault explains the secret of the immortality of Jules Verne’s books, their growing popularity even today, when most of the writer’s technical predictions turned out to be realized, and in many ways surpassed: “If Jules Verne and his extraordinary travels do not die, it is only because they – and with them the so attractive 19th century – posed problems that the 20th century could not and will not be able to escape from.”
I. Naidenkov