
Verne's signature
Jules Gabriel Verne (8
February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French
author who helped pioneer the science-fiction genre. He is best
known for his novels
A Journey to the Centre of
the Earth (1864),
From the Earth to the Moon
(1865),
Twenty
Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1869–1870),
Around the World
in Eighty Days (1873) and
The Mysterious Island (1875).
Verne wrote about
space,
air, and
underwater travel
before navigable aircraft and practical submarines were invented,
and before any means of space travel had been devised. Consequently
he is often referred to as the "Father of science fiction", along
with
H. G.
Wells. Verne is the second most
translated author of all time, only behind
Agatha Christie, with 4223 translations,
according to
Index
Translationum. Some of his works have been made into
films.
Biography
Early years
He was
born in the bustling harbor city of Nantes
in Western
France
. The oldest of five children, he spent his
early years at home with his parents.
The family spent
summers in a country house just outside the city, on the banks of
the Loire
River
. Verne and his brother Paul, of whom Verne
was very fond, would often rent a boat for a franc a day. The sight
of the many ships navigating the river sparked Verne's imagination,
as he describes in the autobiographical
short story "Souvenirs d'Enfance et de
Jeunesse". When Verne was nine, he and Paul were sent to
boarding school at the Saint Donatien
College (Petit séminaire de Saint-Donatien). As a child, he
developed a great interest in
travel and
exploration, a passion he showed as a
writer of
adventure stories and
science fiction. At twelve, he snuck onto a
ship that was bound for India, the
Coralie, only to be
caught and severely whipped by his father. He famously stated, "I
shall from now on only travel in my imagination."

Photo by Felix Nadar
At the boarding school, Verne studied
Latin, which he used in his short story "Le
Mariage de Monsieur Anselme des Tilleuls" in the mid 1850s. One of
his teachers may have been the French inventor
Brutus de Villeroi, professor of drawing
and mathematics at Saint Donatien in 1842, and who later became
famous for creating the
U.S. Navy's first
submarine,
the
U.S.S. Alligator. De Villeroi may
have inspired Verne's conceptual design for the
Nautilus in
Twenty Thousand Leagues
Under The Sea, although no direct exchanges between the
two men have been recorded. At Nantes in 1835, when De Villeroi and
a companion submerged for two hours in a ten foot submarine, Verne
was seven years old. For years afterward, De Villeroi carried on
submarine experiments in Nantes.
Literary debut
After
completing his studies at the lycée, Verne went to Paris
to study
law. About 1848, in conjunction with
Michel Carré, he began writing
librettos for
operettas (he
was co-librettist of
Colin-Millard, a one act
opera comique by Aristide Hignard). For some
years his attentions were divided between the theatre and work, but
some travelers' stories which he wrote for the
Musée des
Familles revealed to him his talent for writing fiction.
When Verne's father discovered that his son was writing rather than
studying law, he promptly withdrew his financial support. Verne was
forced to support himself as a
stockbroker, which he hated despite being
somewhat successful at it. During this period, he met
Alexandre Dumas, père and
Victor Hugo, who offered him
writing advice. Dumas would become a close friend of
Verne.
Verne also met
Honorine de Viane
Morel, a widow with two daughters. They were married on 10
January 1857. With her encouragement, he continued to write and
actively looked for a publisher. On August 3, 1861, their son,
Michel Jean Verne, was born. A classic
enfant terrible, Michel was
sent to
Mettray Penal Colony in
1876 and later married an actress (in spite of Verne's objections),
had two children by his 16-year-old mistress, and buried himself in
debts. The relationship between father and son did improve as
Michel grew older.
Verne's situation improved when he met
Pierre-Jules Hetzel, one of the most
important French publishers of the 19th century, who also published
Victor Hugo,
Georges Sand, and
Erckmann-Chatrian, among others. They
formed an excellent writer-publisher team until Hetzel's death.
Hetzel helped improve Verne's writings, which until then had been
repeatedly rejected by other publishers. Hetzel read a draft of
Verne's story about the
balloon exploration of
Africa, which had been rejected by other
publishers for being "too scientific". With Hetzel's help, Verne
rewrote the story, which was published in 1863 in book form as
Cinq semaines en ballon (
Five Weeks in a Balloon).
Acting on Hetzel's advice, Verne added comical accents to his
novels, changed sad endings into happy ones, and toned down various
political messages.
In 1864, Verne wrote an admiring study of the works of
Edgar Allan Poe (
Edgar Poe et ses
oeuvres, 1864) and it is not difficult to see Poe's works,
published in France as
Histoires extraordinaires
(Extraordinary Stories), as a source of inspiration for Verne. In
fact, Verne was so intrigued by Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym of Nantucket" that he penned a sequel to the work
entitled "An Antarctic Mystery." Verne set his story eleven years
after the disappearance of Pym and recounts through the persona of
Jeorling, a man of science, the adventures encountered during an
expedition tracing Pym's travels.
From that point to years after Verne's death, Hetzel published two
or more volumes a year. The most successful of these
include:
Voyage au centre de la terre (
Journey to the Centre of the
Earth, 1864);
De la terre à la lune (
From the Earth to the Moon,
1865);
Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (
Twenty Thousand Leagues
under the Sea, 1869); and
Le tour du monde en
quatre-vingts jours (
Around the World
in Eighty Days), which first appeared in
Le Temps
in 1872. The series is collectively known as "Les voyages
extraordinaires" ("extraordinary voyages"). Verne could now live on
his writings.
But most of his wealth came from the stage
adaptations of Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours
(1874) and Michel Strogoff
(1876), a relatively conventional adventure tale set in Tsarist
Russia
, which he adapted for the stage with Adolphe d'Ennery. In 1867 Verne
bought a small ship, the
Saint-Michel, which he
successively replaced with the
Saint-Michel II and the
Saint-Michel III as his financial situation improved. On
board the
Saint-Michel III, he sailed around Europe. In
1870, he was appointed "Chevalier" (Knight) of the
Légion d'honneur. After his first
novel, most of his stories were first serialised in the
Magazine d'Éducation et de Récréation, a Hetzel biweekly
publication, before being
published in the form of books. Jules' brother Paul
contributed to a non-fiction story "Fortieth Ascent of Mont Blanc"
("Quarantième ascension du Mont-Blanc") to the collection of short
stories,
Doctor Ox (1874).
According
to the Unesco
Index Translationum, Jules Verne
regularly places among the top five most translated authors in the
world.
Last years
On 9 March 1886, as Verne approached his own home, his
twenty-five-year-old nephew Gaston, who suffered from paranoia,
shot twice at him with a gun. One bullet missed, but the second
entered Verne's left leg, giving him a permanent limp. Gaston spent
the rest of his life in an asylum.

Verne in 1892
After the deaths of Hetzel and his beloved mother in 1887, Verne
began writing darker works. This may have been due partly to
changes in his personality, but an important factor was that
Hetzel's son, who took over his father's business, was not as
rigorous in his edits and corrections as Hetzel Sr. had been.
In 1888,
Verne entered politics and was elected town
councilor of Amiens
, where he
championed several improvements and served for fifteen
years. Though elected from the left he stood with the right
on
Dreyfus Affair and was
anti-Dreyfusard.In 1905, ill with
diabetes,
Verne died at his home, 44 Boulevard Longueville (now Boulevard
Jules-Verne). His son Michel oversaw publication of his last novels
Invasion of the Sea and
The Lighthouse at the End of the
World. The "Voyages extraordinaires" series continued for
several years afterwards in the same rhythm of two volumes a year.
It was later discovered that Michel Verne had made extensive
changes in these stories, and the original versions were published
at the end of the 20th century.
In 1863, Verne wrote
Paris
in the 20th Century, a novel about a young man who lives
in a world of glass
skyscrapers,
high-speed trains, gas-powered
automobiles,
calculators, and a worldwide communications
network, yet cannot find happiness and comes to a tragic end.
Hetzel thought the novel's pessimism would damage Verne's then
booming career, and suggested he wait 20 years to publish it. Verne
put the manuscript in a safe, where it was discovered by his
great-grandson in 1989. It was published in 1994.
Death
Jules
Verne died on 24 March 1905 and was buried in the Madeleine Cemetery in Amiens
.
There are
recently (2008) initiated efforts to have him reburied in the
Panthéon
, alongside France's other literary
giants.
Reputation in English-speaking countries
_1.jpg/180px-Amiens_cimeti%C3%A8re_de_la_Madeleine_(tombe_Jules_VERNE)_1.jpg)
The tomb of Jules Verne in Amiens
(Somme); sculpture by Albert Roze (1861-1953).
While Verne is considered in France as an author of quality books
for young people, with a good command of his subjects, including
technology and politics, his reputation in English-speaking
countries suffered for a long time as a result of poor
translation.
Some English publishers felt
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
portrayed the
British Empire in a bad
light, and the first English translator, Reverend
Lewis Page Mercier, working under a
pseudonym, removed many offending
passages. Mrs. Agnes Kinloch Kingston (writing in the name of her
husband,
W.H.G.
Kingston) deleted parts of
The Mysterious Island such as those describing the
political actions of Captain Nemo in
his incarnation as an Indian
nobleman
freedom fighter. Such negative depictions were not, however,
invariable in Verne's works; for example,
Facing the Flag features, in the
character of Lieutenant Devon, a heroic, self-sacrificing
Royal Navy officer worthy of any created by
British authors. In
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea itself,
Captain Nemo, there of unidentified nationality, is balanced by Ned
Land, a Canadian. Some of Verne's most famous heroes were British
(e.g. Phileas Fogg in
Around the World
in Eighty Days).
Mercier and subsequent British translators also had trouble with
the
metric system that Verne used, sometimes
dropping significant figures, at other times changing the unit to
an
Imperial measure without changing
the corresponding value. Thus Verne's calculations, which in
general were remarkably exact, were converted into mathematical
gibberish. Also, artistic passages and sometimes whole chapters
were cut to fit the work into a constrained space for
publication.
For these reasons, Verne's work initially acquired a reputation in
English-speaking countries of not being fit for adult readers. This
in turn prevented it from being taken seriously enough to merit new
translations, and those of Mercier and others were reprinted decade
after decade. Only from 1965 on have some of his novels received
more accurate translations, but even today Verne's work has not
been fully rehabilitated in the English-speaking world.
Verne's
works may also reflect the bitterness France felt in the wake of
its defeat in the Franco-Prussian
War (1870–71) and the consequent loss of Alsace
and Lorraine
. The
Begum's Millions (
Les Cinq cents millions de la
Begum) of 1879 gives a highly stereotypical depiction of
Germans as monstrously cruel militarists. By contrast, almost all
the protagonists in his pre-1871 works, such as the sympathetic
first-person narrator in
Journey to the Centre of the
Earth, are German.
Hetzel's influence
Hetzel substantially influenced
the writings of Verne, who was so happy to finally find a willing
publisher that he agreed to almost all changes that Hetzel
suggested. Hetzel rejected at least one novel (
Paris in the 20th Century),
and asked Verne to make significant changes in his other drafts.
One of the most important changes Hetzel imposed on Verne was the
adoption of a more optimistic tone. Verne was in fact not an
enthusiast of technological and human progress, as can be seen in
the works he created both before he met Hetzel and after the
publisher's death. Hetzel's insistence on a more optimistic text
proved correct. For example,
The Mysterious Island
originally ended with the survivors returning to mainland forever
nostalgic about the island. Hetzel decided that the heroes should
live happily, so in the revised draft, they use their fortunes to
build a replica of the island. Many translations are like this.
Also, in
order not to offend France's then-ally, Russia
, the famous
Captain Nemo was changed from a
Polish
refugee
avenging the partitions of
Poland and the death of his family, killed in the reprisals
following the January Uprising, to
an Indian
prince
fighting the British Empire after the
Sikh War.
Predictions
Jules Verne's novels have been noted for being startlingly accurate
anticipations of modern times.
Paris in the 20th Century is
an often cited example of this as it arguably describes
air conditioning,
automobiles,
the
Internet,
television, and other
modern conveniences very similar to their real world
counterparts.
Another example is
From
the Earth to the Moon, which is uncannily similar to the
real
Apollo Program, as three
astronauts are launched from the Florida peninsula and recovered
through a splash landing.
In the book, the spacecraft is launched from
"Tampa Town"; Tampa,
Florida
is approximately 130 miles from NASA's
actual
launching
site
at Cape
Canaveral
.
In other works, Verne predicted the inventions of
helicopters,
submarines,
projectors,
jukeboxes, and other later devices.
He also predicted the existence of underwater hydrothermal vents
that were not discovered until years after he wrote about
them.
Scholars' jokes
Verne, who had a large archive and always kept up with scientific
and technological progress, sometimes seemed to joke with the
readers, using so-called "scholars' jokes" (that is, a joke that
only a scientist may recognise). For instance, in
Dick Sand, A Captain at
Fifteen, a
Manticora
beetle helps Cousin Bénédict to escape from
imprisonment when Bénédict, unguarded, follows the beetle out of
the garden. Since the beetle escapes from Cousin Bénédict by flying
away, when in fact the genus is flightless, it is possible that
this is one such joke. Another example appears in
Mysterious Island, where the main
character's dog is attacked by a wild
dugong,
even though the dugong, like its North American cousin, the
manatee, is a herbivorous mammal. Also in
Mysterious Island, because of its fauna and flora, the
sailor Bonadventure Pencroff asks Cyrus Smith whether the latter
believes that islands (like the one they are on) are made specially
to be ideal ones for castaways.
From the Earth to the Moon
(the material used for the
cannon — in
this case it was probably
poetic
license, since the description of the making of the gun became
far more dramatic), or
The
Begum's Millions, where the methods used for making
steel in "Steel City", described as the most
modern steel
factory in the world, were
rather dated, but, again, much more spectacular to describe. (See
Neff, 1978)
Bibliography

Jules Verne in front of creatures from
his novels and stories.
Verne wrote numerous works, most famous of which are the 54 novels
part of the
Voyages
Extraordinaires. He also wrote short stories, essays,
plays, and poems.
Note: only the dates of the first English translation and the most
common translation title are given.
Apocryphal and posthumous novels
- (1885) L'Épave du Cynthia; English translation:
The Waif of the
Cynthia (1885), with André Laurie (pseudonym of Paschal Grousset), but actually the work of
Grousset alone
- (1905) Le Phare du bout du monde; English translation:
The
Lighthouse at the End of the World (1923), modified by
Michel Verne
- (1906) Le Volcan d'or; English translation:
The Golden Volcano: The Claim
on Forty Mile Creek and Flood and Flame (2 vols.,
1962), modified by Michel Verne
- (1907) L'Agence Thompson and Cº; English translation:
The Thompson Travel
Agency: Package Holiday and End of the Journey (2
vols., 1965), written by Michel
Verne
- (1908) La Chasse au météore; English translation:
The Chase of the
Golden Meteor (1909), modified by Michel Verne
- (1908) Le Pilote du Danube; English translation:
The Danube Pilot (1967),
modified by Michel Verne
- (1909) Les Naufragés du Jonathan; English translation:
The Survivors of the
'Jonathan': The Masterless Man and The Unwilling
Dictator (2 vols., 1962), modified by Michel Verne
- (1910) Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz; English
translation: The
Secret of William Storitz (1963), modified by Michel Verne
- (1919) L'Étonnante Aventure de la mission Barsac;
English translation: The Barsac
Mission: Into the Niger Bend and The City of the
Sahara (2 vols., 1960), written by Michel Verne
- (1989) Voyage en Angleterre et en Ecosse; English
translation: Backwards to
Britain (1992), written in 1859
- (1994) Paris au XXe siècle; English translation:
Paris in the
Twentieth Century (1996), written in 1863
Short story collections
Short stories
- (1851) "Un drame au Mexique"; English translation: "A Drama in Mexico" (1876)
- (1851) "Un drame dans les airs"; English translation: "A Drama in the Air" (1852)
- (1852) "Martin Paz"; English translation: "Martin Paz"
(1875)
- (1854) "Maître Zacharius"; English translation: "Master
Zacharius" (1874)
- (1855) "Un hivernage dans les glaces"; English translation: "A
Winter Amid the Ice" (1874)
- (1864) "Le Comte de Chanteleine"; English translation: "The
Count of Chanteleine" (n/a)
- (1865) "Les Forceurs de blocus"; English translation: "The Blockade Runners" (1874)
- (1872) "Une fantaisie du docteur Ox"; English translation:
"Dr. Ox's Experiment"
(1874)
- (1875) "Une ville idéale"; English translation: "An Ideal City"
(1965)
- (1879) "Les Révoltés de la Bounty"; English translation:
"The Mutineers of the
Bounty" (1879)
- (1881) "Dix Heures en chasse"; English translation: "Ten Hours
Hunting" (1965)
- (1884) "Frritt-Flacc"; English translation: "Frritt-Flacc" (1892)
- (1887) "Gil Braltar"; English translation: "Gil Braltar" (1958)
- (1891) "La Journée d'un journaliste américain en 2889"; English
translation: "In the Year 2889" (1889)
- (1891) "Aventures de la famille Raton"; English translation:
"Adventures of the Rat Family" (1993)
- (1893) "Monsieur Ré-Dièze et Mademoiselle Mi-Bémol"; English
translation: "Mr. Ray Sharp and Miss Me Flat" (1965)
Apocryphal short stories
- (1888) "Un Express de l'avenir"; English translation: "An
Express of the Future" (1895), written by Michel Verne
- (1910) "La Destinée de Jean Morénas"; English translation: "The
Fate of Jean Morenas" (1965), written by Michel Verne
- (1910) "L'Éternel Adam"; English translation: "The Eternal Adam" (1957), written by Michel
Verne
Non-fiction works
- (1857) Salon de 1857; no English translation
- (1864) Edgar Poe et ses oeuvres, (Edgar Allan Poe and
his works)
- (1866) Géographie illustrée de la France et de ses
colonies; English translation: Illlustrated Geography of
France and its Colonies (n/a), with Théophile Lavallée
- Histoire des grands voyages et des grands voyageurs;
English translation: Celebrated Travels and Travellers
- (1878) Découverte de la terre; English translation:
The Exploration of the World (1879)
- (1879) Les Grand navigateurs du XVIIIème siècle;
English translation: The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth
Century (1879)
- (1880) Les Voyageurs du XIXème siècle; English
translation: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century
(1881)
Imitations by other writers
The Wizard of the Sea by
Roy
Rockwood is a clear copy of Verne's
20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea, apart from the first chapter(s). One or two other of
Rockwood's titles also seem to (lesser) resemble some of Verne's,
eg compare
Five Thousand Miles Underground to
Journey
to the Centre of the Earth.
In 1999 German writer
Dieter
Lammerding has written a drama named
Phantastische Reise zu
Kapitän Nemo, merging two novels into one piece.
See also
About Verne:
Other science-fiction pioneers:
Inspired by Verne:
Films based on works of Jules Verne
Jules Verne's works have inspired filmmakers almost from the birth
of cinema.
Georges Méliès,
one of the earliest pioneers of French cinema, who had a taste for
the fantastic, adapted some of Verne's works prior to 1910. Most of
Verne's most famous novels, and some of his lesser known ones,
received French, American, German, and Soviet adaptations in the
1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, but probably the best known film
adaptations of Verne's works came from American studios in the
mid-1950s to early 1960s. These included Disney's
20,000 Leagues Under the
Sea (1954), a production of
Around the World in 80
Days that won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1956,
a production of
From the
Earth to the Moon in 1958,
Journey to the Center of the
Earth in 1959,
Mysterious
Island in 1961, and
In Search of the Castaways
in 1962. These were large-scale productions featuring top American,
British, and international stars.
While American studios' interest in Verne waned after this period,
productions in other countries and smaller scale American
productions have continued pretty much without interruption since
the invention of film, up to this day. A recent example is the 2008
remake of
Journey
to the Center of the Earth (which was in 3D, and a highly
successful box office hit). Other notable twenty-first century
adaptations include the 2004 remake of
Around the World in 80
Days (starring
Steve Coogan
and
Jackie Chan) and the 2005 version of
Mysterious Island
(starring
Patrick Stewart) which was
only loosely based on the novel. There were also references to many
of Verne's works in the unsuccessful 2003 film
League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen. In 2008, three British film-makers announced their
upcoming film adaptation of "Clovis Dardentor", one of Verne's
lesser known works.
The majority of the many film and television productions of Verne's
works have concentrated on his most famous novels, but there have
also been film adaptations of many of his lesser known works, such
as
The
Lighthouse at the End of the World,
The Carpathian Castle, and
The Vanished Diamond,
filmed as
The Southern Star.
Michael Strogoff has been a
particularly popular property for adaptation by non-Americans,
having been filmed at least a dozen times for cinema and
television, starting in 1910.
Many famous actors have appeared in Verne films, including James
Mason, Kirk Douglas, Maurice Chevalier, Peter Lorre, David Niven,
Shirley MacLaine, Joseph Cotton, Lionel Barrymore, Orson Welles,
Yul Brynner, Jackie Chan, Brendan Fraser, and even the Three
Stooges. The 1956 American version of
Around the World in 80
Days is sometimes credited with inventing the concept of
cameo appearances by big stars, and had (often very brief)
appearances by a dizzying array of famous performers, including
Frank Sinatra, John Gielgud, Noel Coward, Charles Boyer, Fernandel,
Trevor Howard, Cesar Romero, George Raft, Buster Keaton, Marlene
Dietrich, Ronald Colman, and many others.
There have also been animated adaptations. The story
Two Years
Vacation was turned into a made-for-TV animation Japanese
studio Nippon Animation under the title of
The Story of Fifteen
Boys (Japanese: 十五少年漂流記). An even more successful adaptation
was the Spanish animated adaptation of
Around the World in 80
Days,
Around
the World with Willy Fog.
References
- Adam Roberts (2000), Science Fiction, London: Routledge, p.
48, ISBN 0-415-19204-8. Others who are popularly called the "Father
of science fiction" include Hugo Gernsback and Edgar Allan Poe.
- Jules Verne (1995), Monna Lisa; suivi de Souvenirs
d'enfance et de jeunesse, Paris: L'Herne, p. 101. ISBN
2-85197-328-2.
- Lincoln and the Tools of War by Robert V. Bruce —
University of Illinois Press ISBN 978-0252060908 p 176
- Peggy Teeters (1993), Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented
Tomorrow, New York: Walker, p. 24. ISBN 0802781896.
- William Butcher, Journey to the Centre of the
Earth, Oxford U Press, 1992.
- "An Antarctic Mystery", The Gregg Press, 1975
- Walter A. McDougall (2001), " Journey to the Center of Jules Verne... and Us",
Watch on the West 2, n. 4.
- William Butcher (2007), " A
Chronology of Jules Verne", in Jules Verne, Lighthouse at
the End of the World, Lincoln (NE): University of Nebraska
Press, p. XXXVII, ISBN 0803246765.
- Norman Wolcott (2005), A Jules Verne Centennial: 1905-2005, Washington
(DC): Smithsonian Institution Libraries.
- Volker Dehs, Jean-Michel Margot and Zvi Har’El, " The
Complete Jules Verne Bibliography, X: Apocrypha". Retrieved on
2008-11-10.
Further reading
- William Butcher, Arthur C.
Clarke (Introduction) (2006).
Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography. ISBN
1-56025-854-3
- Peter Costello, Jules Verne: Inventor of Science
Fiction. ISBN 0-684-15824-8
- Herbert R. Lottman (1997). Jules Verne: An Exploratory
Biography. ISBN 0-312-14636-1
- Françoise I. Schiltz (2007). The Future Re-visited: 1950s
American Film Adaptations of Jules Verne Novels. PhD in Film
Studies. University of Southampton. School of Humanities.
- Jean Jules-Verne (1976). Jules Verne, A Biography.
ISBN 0-8008-4439-4
- Philippe Melot et Jean-Marie Embs (2005).Le Guide Jules
Verne.Les Editions de l'Amateur,Paris. ISBN 2-85917-417-6
- Ondřej Neff,
Podivuhodný svět Julese Vernea (The Extraordinary
World of Jules Verne), Prague
,
(1978)
- Gallagher, E. J. (1980). Jules Verne: A primary and
secondary bibliography. Boston: MA, G. K. Hall & Co.
- Evans, A. B. (1988). Jules Verne rediscovered: Didacticism
and the scientific novel. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
- Martin, A. (1990). The mask of the prophet: The
extraordinary fictions of Jules Verne. New York: Oxford
University Press.
- Lynch, L. (1992). Jules Verne. New York: Twayne
Publishers.
External links
- Les Voyages Extraordinaires —
list of Verne works Compiled by Dennis Kytasaari.
- Jules Verne's works: text, concordances and
frequency list
- Zvi Har'El's
Jules Verne Collection, including the Jules Verne
Virtual Library, online sources of 51 of Jules Verne's novels
translated into eight languages.
- The Jules Verne Collecting Resource Page, complete
online sources, posters, cards, autographs, first edition covers,
etc.
- Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography
- A Chronology of Jules Verne
- Biography of Jules Verne
- Jules Verne: A Reappraisal, by William
Butcher
- "Jules Verne: Father of Science Fiction?", John
Derbyshire, The New
Atlantis, Number 12, Spring 2006, pp. 81–90. A review of four new
Jules Verne translations from the "Early Classics of Science
Fiction" series by Wesleyan University Press
.
- Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography, by
Herbert R. Lottman — a review
- A Jules Verne Centennial: 1905–2005
- List of audio books at LibriVox by Jules
Verne