Jules Verne was born on 8 February 1828 in Nantes, a flourishing city in Brittany whose wealth, like that of Bristol, was centred on the three-way trade of European consumer goods, African slaves and West Indian tropical produce. He was the eldest child of Pierre Verne, an austere, pious man who hoped his son would follow in his professional footsteps by becoming a lawyer. His mother, Sophie, described by an early biographer as ‘sweet, cordial, but a little coquettish’, was from a family of merchants who were proud to trace their lineage back to a fifteenth-century Scottish archer in the services of the French king.
Verne was not particularly interested in school and was generally an undistinguished pupil, though he won prizes for geography. He preferred the freedom of the summer holidays when his family moved to their countryside estate at Chantenay. The young Jules enjoyed sailing with his brother Paul on the Loire and in 1839, at the age of 11, he attempted to run away to sea on a ship bound for the West Indies. Having been beaten by his father for this short-lived adventure he promised his mother ‘From now on I’ll travel only in my imagination’.
Out of a sense of duty to his father, Verne studied law at Nantes after completion of his baccalauréat and in 1847 he made his first train journey, travelling to Paris to sit his first-year law exams. This was an unsettling time for him emotionally as his cousin Caroline Tronson, with whom he had fallen in love, had become engaged to be married to another man: it would take him many years to recover from this unhappy romance. He returned to Paris in July 1848 for his second-year exams, spent another summer in Chantenay, and then, in November, moved into a flat on Paris’s Left Bank to commence his final year of study. To his father’s disappointment, his time in Paris fuelled his interest not in law but in writing and among the new friends he made at the literary salons he visited were the writers Alexandre Dumas, père and fils.
Verne’s one-act comedy Broken Straws opened on 12 June 1850 and was a minor critical success. He had by now obtained his law degree and his father hoped that he would eventually return to Nantes to take over the family firm. But, instead, he moved to the Right Bank of Paris, away from the more rowdy student quarter, determined to become a professional writer. He wrote further plays and the librettos for operettas – though few were performed – as he felt his future lay in the theatre. He also spent time at the National Library making notes on scientific innovations and geographic discoveries, a research practice he continued throughout his working life: by 1895 he had accumulated around 25,000 ‘fact’ cards used as reference material in his short stories and novels.
In 1852 Verne was appointed to the unpaid post of secretary to the director of the Théâtre Lyrique, where he enjoyed the excitement of backstage life as well as the contact it brought him with other playwrights. The journal Le Musée de Familles had published some of his stories and in November 1855, having set a little money aside, he handed over his duties at the theatre to one of his friends and retreated to his room for a month to concentrate on his writing. He was back in circulation by December, visiting salons and brothels, and writing risqué poetry that would have appalled his father. His bohemian life continued until May 1856, when, at a wedding reception in the cathedral city of Amiens, 120km north of Paris, he met and fell in love with a widow, Madame Honorine Morel, who had two daughters. Verne and Honorine were married on 10 January 1857 and, to support his new family, Verne went to work as a stockbroker, though he continued to write whenever possible.
In 1859 Verne’s old friend Aristide Hignard, the son of a shipping agent, suggested they go on a trip together, taking advantage of two free berths his family had arranged. This was Verne’s first journey outside France. The two friends travelled from Bordeaux to Liverpool and on to Edinburgh, the Scottish Highlands, Glasgow, and the Hebrides. The strange imagery of the watery cavern of Fingal’s Cave on the island of Staffa would later be used in Journey to the Centre of the Earth and The Mysterious Island, and the cave itself provided the dramatic setting for the dashing hero’s rescue of his sweetheart in The Green Ray. Having travelled down to London by an overnight excursion train, Verne visited the ship-yard where Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s ss Great Eastern was being fitted out, vowing to Hignard that he would travel on her one day. However, it would be some years before he could afford to do so. He also went to see the Thames Tunnel designed by Brunel’s father, Marc Brunel. and was impressed by this remarkable feat of engineering.
Returning to France, Verne continued with his struggle to establish himself as a writer, hampered by the disruption brought to the household by the arrival of his only son Michel, born in 1861 while Verne and Hignard were travelling in Scandinavia. Among Verne’s friends was Felix Tournachon, better known as Nadar, the leading portrait-photographer of fashionable society and a man passionately interested in aeronautical science. Nadar and his fellow enthusiasts had conceived of a giant hot-air balloon, Le Géant, said to be as tall as the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which gave Verne the germ of an idea for his first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, published in 1863. Further inspiration came from his literary hero Edgar Allan Poe’s story ‘The Balloon Hoax’, a newspaper spoof published in 1844 about a balloon that crossed the Atlantic in three days.
Five Weeks in a Balloon was published by Hetzel and Company and it was an immediate commercial success. Pierre-Jules Hetzel offered Verne a long-term contract to publish up to three books a year. This gave Verne some much needed financial security, the opportunity to fulfil his dream of producing a series of books describing the latest scientific achievements, and a friendship that lasted until Hetzel’s death over 20 years later. In 1866, following the success of Journey to the Centre of the Earth and From the Earth to the Moon, Hetzel invented a collective title for Verne’s novels: Voyages Extraordinaires Dans les Pays Connus et Inconnus (Extraordinary Journeys into the Known and Unknown Worlds).
Verne combined facts with fantasy to produce thrilling adventure novels that demonstrated his knowledge of geography, history, engineering and science culled from encyclopaedias and library archives, as well as his own travels. Critic Roger Cardinal says ‘Verne’s insistent provision of scientific detail reflects the contemporary fascination with the novelties of exploration and technology during what may be seen as the golden age of the popularisation of the sciences’. In conjuring up the type of man who could write such enthralling tales, ‘bubbling… with mystery, scientific conjecture, and distant lands’, Frances H Putman writes:
Take one overactive imagination. Place it squarely in the middle of the nineteenth century. Add a precise scientific curiosity, a frustrated desire for world travel, and the ability to write quickly and with zest. Simmer for a few years in the midst of Parisian literary society, and you might produce a Jules Verne.
With a regular income, Verne could now afford to take his promised voyage on the Great Eastern, which had been bought by a French company to carry transatlantic freight and passengers. He arrived with his brother Paul in Liverpool in March 1867 to watch preparations for the ship’s departure and began making detailed notes so he could write up an account of their trip. Their 14-day crossing of the Atlantic was marred by terrifying storms in which the great ship was ‘tossed like a cork’, as Verne wrote to Hetzel. They arrived in New York on 9 April and took a train trip to Niagara Falls before returning home to France.
In August 1870 Verne was awarded the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest decoration, a reward for gallantry in military action or for distinguished service in work that enhances the country’s reputation. At the time he was caught up in the chaos of the Prussian invasion of France, which heralded the start of the Third Republic. Being too old for conscription, he was ordered to set up a coastguard unit at Crotoy, a little fishing village on the Somme where he had moved in 1865. Because of the war and the subsequent siege of Paris, publication of his novel A Floating City, based on his trip on the Great Eastern, was delayed until 1871.
Publishers were only just recovering from the slump in the book trade when he began work on his most successful novel, Around the World in Eighty Days published in book form in 1873. This book marked his transition from being a national celebrity to a world-famous author. Contemporary wits remarking on this success said that Mr Fogg’s real achievement was not his rapid circling of the world, but the making of Verne’s fortune.
To please Honorine Verne had moved the family to her hometown of Amiens. Verne joined the Académie d’Amiens and settled down to what was, for him, a rather uncomfortable life as a member of the respectable middle-class. His nephew Maurice said that ‘At heart, my uncle had only three passions: freedom, music and the sea’, passions he shared with his heroic creation Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In 1877 he bought the third – and largest – of a series of sailing boats he called Saint Michel. In between writing his money-spinning adventures, he sailed to Portugal, North Africa, Cowes (where he refused an invitation to attend a reception for the Prince of Wales), Norway, Scotland, Ireland, the Baltic Sea and Italy.
However, after a few years of success Verne began to falter. Although his work continued to be published, the quality was waning and, in time, so were his sales. Saint Michel was sold at a loss in February 1886, allegedly because of his poor health but, more pertinently, because of his financial difficulties. On 9 March that year, his deranged nephew Gaston waited in ambush at Verne’s home and shot him in the foot. The wound was serious, leading to a series of painful operations and leaving Verne permanently lame. On 17 March, his close friend and professional colleague Hetzel died after a long illness.
No longer as physically active as he had once been, Verne became absorbed in local politics to fill the time between his research and writing. In May 1888 he was elected to serve as city councillor in Amiens, a position he held for 16 years until forced to retire through ill health. Despite this distraction, his outlook on life became increasingly gloomy and the sense of gathering darkness was reflected in his work. Where once he had looked optimistically at the opportunities for human progress through science, now he had lost his faith and become disillusioned.
The Vernes had moved to a larger house in Amiens in 1882, but returned to their original smaller home in 1900. By now Verne’s health was failing. His foot continued to trouble him, he had cataracts, was partially deaf and suffered from diabetes, then a fatal disease. He died on the morning of 24 March 1905 at the age of 77. His son Michel arranged for a memorial to be raised over his grave on which were carved the words: Onward to immortality and eternal youth.
Verne is often described as a ‘founding father’ of science fiction, similar in his approach to science to the British author H G Wells. Neither man was comfortable with the comparison. Wells wrote:
As a matter of fact there is no literary resemblance between the anticipatory inventions of the great Frenchman and [my own] fantasies. His work dealt almost always with actual possibilities of invention and discovery and he made some remarkable forecasts. The interest he invoked was a practical one; he wrote and believed and told that this thing or that thing could be done, which was not done at the time. He helped his readers imagine it done and to realise what fun, excitement or mischief might ensue.
Interviewed near the end of his life, Verne said:
There is an author whose work has appealed to me very strongly from an imaginative stand-point, and whose books I have followed with considerable interest. I allude to Mr H G Wells. Some of my friends have suggested to me that his work is on somewhat similar lines to my own but here I think they err. I consider him, as a purely imaginative writer, to be deserving of high praise, but our methods are entirely different. I have always made a point in my romances of basing my so-called inventions upon a groundwork of actual fact, and of using in their construction methods and materials which are not entirely without the pale of contemporary engineering skill and knowledge.
Among the inventions that Verne anticipated were the fully-powered submarine Nautilus of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and space travel. Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman, who led the first team to circle the moon, had read From the Earth to the Moon in which the hero Impey Barbicane launches a space rocket. Borman wrote to Verne’s grandson Jean-Jacques in 1969 saying:
Our space vehicle was launched from Florida, like Barbicane’s; it had the same weight and the same height, and it splashed down in the Pacific a mere two and half miles from the point mentioned in the novel.
English translations of Verne’s work have been available since 1867, often appearing in the early years as serialisations in Boy’s Own Paper and similar periodicals. The translators took liberties with the plot, dialogue, scientific explanations and political or social comments, often cutting out large sections of the text because Verne was considered ‘just’ a children’s author, an attitude that continues to harm his reputation outside France. His work was also made available to a wider public by filmmakers, who similarly adapted his original creations to their own needs, excising much of the political and scientific content. In his own lifetime he could have seen one of the earliest films in cinema history, George Méliés’ A Trip to the Moon (1902) which was based on From the Earth to the Moon. Three of the most successful Verne films came out in the 1950s: Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Mike Todd’s extravaganza Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) and Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1959) starring James Mason, who had earlier played Captain Nemo. The 2005 world-wide celebrations of Verne’s work that coincided with the 100th anniversary of his death and the new translations available of his novels by William Butcher, among others, have served to reclaim Verne for literary fiction while retaining the thrills and spectacle that had secured his popular success.
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1. When and where was Jules Verne born?
Jules Verne was born on the 8th of February, 1828 in Île Feydeau, in the city of Nantes, France. His full name was Jules Gabriel Verne, and he was the first of five children born from the marriage between his father, Pierre Verne, a Parisian lawyer, who came from a lineage of jurists of the city of Provence and his mother, Sophie Allotte de la Fuÿe, of Breton and Scottish origin. After Jules, were born Paul in 1829, and three girls: Anna in 1836, Mathilde in 1839, and Marie in 1842.
3. Did Verne inherit his writing skills from some of his parents?
Neither his father, Pierre Verne, nor his mother, Sophie Allotte de la Fuÿe, had any special inclination for literature. Pierre Verne is known to have written some songs in his youth, but he avoided all publicity. His songs were only sung in the family, very few of them got into print. In fact, Verne’s father obliged Verne to go to Paris to study law, assuming that he would replace him as a lawyer in the city of Nantes. He wanted his son to be a lawyer, not a writer.
4. Which kind of works did Jules Verne write before he became well known?
Verne wrote a lot in his youth. He wrote poems (quite a lot actually), short stories, plays and songs. Most of them were published in a magazine that was edited in Paris named Musée des familles. Some years later, when Verne began to be famous, many of those short stories and plays — chosen by his editor — appeared in some volumes of his well-known series of books. Also, a book with a collection of his poems and songs was published recently.
5. How old was Jules Verne when a novel written by him became his first published novel?
Jules Verne was already 35 when his first novel, Five weeks in a balloon, was published in January 1863. He had written the novel in 1862, and at that point he began to visit all the Parisian editors. After some days he found Jules Hetzel, who was one of the most famous editors of the time. Verne gave the novel, titled Un voyage dans les airs, to Hetzel, who suggested the needed corrections to publish the manuscript. The publication had a brilliant success. Verne had stepped into a new field: Geography and Science into Literature.
6. Was Jules Verne married? How many children were born, if any?
Yes, he was married. The name of his wife was Honorine Deviane (her maiden-name was Morel). She was a widow with two children. On May 20, 1856 Verne went to Amiens to participate in a friend’s wedding. There, he met Honorine, and after eight months, on January 10, 1857 they got married and both went to Paris, where Verne spent some years. Four years later, on the 3rd of August of 1861, his first and only child Michel was born.
7. To which countries did Jules Verne travel?
In 1859, he made a trip to England and Scotland, together with his friend Aristide Hignard. His itinerary was: Bordeaux, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Scotland, London, etc. The recently published novel Backwards to Britain was inspired by this trip.
In 1861, Jules Verne went to Scandinavia, specifically to Norway and Denmark, again with Hignard. While he was away, Honorine gave birth to his son Michel.
In 1867, Jules Verne and his brother Paul embarked on the Great Eastern for a journey to the United States. They spent only a few days in this country, visiting New York and the Niagara Falls. His impressions are given in the novel A floating city.
In 1872, he visited London and Woolwich.
Between 1871 and 1873 he went to Jersey, Guernsey, and Sark (invited by Hetzel).
In 1876, he made a trip to the coastal England.
In 1878, Verne made a large trip on his yacht the Saint-Michel III. He visited Lisbon, Tanger, Gibraltar and Algiers.
In 1879, he sailed to England and Scotland, again with the Saint-Michel III. He visited Yarmouth, Edinburgh and Dover, the Hebrides, etc.
In 1880, he went to Ireland, Scotland and Norway.
In 1881, he made a trip to the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, on board of the Saint-Michel III. Paul Verne wrote about this trip in the short story From Rotterdam to Copenhagen.
In 1884, Verne cruised the Mediterranean with his Saint-Michel III, visiting Algeria, Malta, Italy and other countries.
In 1887, Jules Verne made a tour through Belgium and the Netherlands, where he read his short story The Rat family.
8. In which localities has Jules Verne lived?
During his youth, Jules Verne lived in the Île Feydeau in Nantes. His family also had a house in Chantenay, near the city. In 1847, he went to Paris to study Law. After his marriage, the Verne family lived in Paris for a couple of years, then moved to Auteuil (now a district of Paris) and later to Le Crotoy. In 1871, Jules Verne settled in Amiens, where he would continue to live for the rest of his life, first at Boulevard Guyencourt 23 (1871-1873), then at Boulevard Longueville 44 (1873-1882), Rue Charles-Dubois 2 (1882-1900) and again at Boulevard Longueville until his death in 1905.
10. Did Jules Verne take part in any social development in the city where he lived?
In 1888 Jules Verne was elected into the City Council of Amiens. He specialized in cultural affairs, such as theatres and schools and urbanism. He inaugurated the Cirque Municipal in 1889. Verne was re-elected in 1892, 1896 and 1900.
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C. Questions about Jules Verne’s Works
1. Can you mention some of his predictions?
Here is a list of usage of contemporary and predictable machines and inventions and the books where they were described:
o Long distance travel in balloon (Five weeks in a balloon, The mysterious island, Robur the Conqueror, Hector Servadac)
o Very long range cannon (The 500 millions of the Begum, From the Earth to the Moon)
o Search for sunken treasures (Twenty thousands leagues under the seas)
o Helicopter (Robur the Conqueror)
o Apollo project that led the first men to the Moon in 1969 (From the Earth to the Moon, Around the Moon)
o Interplanetary travels (Hector Servadac)
o Space travels (From the Earth to the Moon, Around the Moon)
o Visiophone (In the 29th century: The diary of an American journalist in 2889)
o North pole discovery (Journeys and adventures of Captain Hatteras)
o South Pole discovery (Twenty thousands leagues under the seas)
o Nile sources discovery (Five weeks in a balloon)
o Electrical engine (Twenty thousands leagues under the seas, Propeller island, Robur the conqueror, Mathias Sandorf, Master of the world)
o Tank (The steam house)
o Aqua-Lung (Twenty thousands leagues under the seas)
o Orthopter (Master of the world)
o Artificial satellite (The 500 millions of the Begum)
o Missing link between man and ape (The aerial village)
o Fertilizing earth around the poles (Adventures of captain Hatteras, Topsy Turvy)
o The life of Adolf Hitler (The 500 millions of the Begum)
2. Can you mention those things people think he predicted and he really did not?
Here is a list of those things that people think that Jules Verne predicted and he really did not. We also explain why the item isn’t considered in the previous list.
o Submarine: Before the writing of Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, there already existed a submarine. The Nautilus (same name as in Verne’s book) was presented by British inventor Robert Fulton at the end of the 18th Century to the Directoire in Paris.
o Atomic bomb: The fulgurateur Roch was a very powerful explosive, but by no means an atomic bomb. Since Disney’s film version of Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, people mistakenly believe that Verne predicted the atomic bomb.
o Television: There is nothing in Verne’s books that comes near a description of modern TV sets.
o Automobile: History gives credit to Nicolas Cugnot for the construction of the first automobile in 1769.
o Computer: There is nothing in Jules Verne’s works predicting computers. We mean the binary Von Neumann machine, from which all mainframes and personal computers are issued.
o Movies: The image of La Stilla (The castle in the Carpathians) does not move.
o Internet: In Propeller Island, Verne described a wire that connects the floating island and the East Coast of the USA, but this is just a normal telegraph line.
o Fax: There existed a fax before the writing of Paris in the XX century. We owe the development of the fax machine to Alexander Bain, a Scottish inventor who was granted a patent for his creation back in 1843. Bain’s original concept is still the basis for modern facsimile or fax machines.
3. Why was Paris in the twentieth century published 130 years after being written by Jules Verne?
Jules Verne wrote this book in 1863. He gave the manuscript to Hetzel, who refused it. He told Verne that the subject of the novel was so pessimistic, that the publication of this novel could be a real disaster for the reputation of Jules Verne as a writer. That was the reason why Hetzel did not publish the manuscript. After this Verne filed the novel between his papers, and 130 years later, the manuscript appeared. The family had kept the manuscript, even if the vernian scholars knew about its existence. Then, the manuscript was discovered, by chance, in 1990 by Verne’s great grandson. He found it in a safe deposit that Michel had thought was empty and also he had lost its key. In 1994, it was published in France, by Hachette, and immediately had a great success.
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5. Who named Jules Verne’s series of books as Extraordinary Voyages, and why?
It was his editor, Jules Hetzel, who gave that name to the collection. Three novels had already been published with success, when Hetzel came to the idea to have a general collection title. In the prologue of Journeys and adventures of captain Hatteras, Hetzel wrote that the goal of Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages was “to outline all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format...the history of the universe”.
6. What was the first of the Extraordinary Voyages?
The first true story of this series is Journeys and adventures of captain Hatteras, if we take into consideration that Hetzel began to name the series, when this novel was published.
7. Phileas Fogg thought that he had lost his bet when he arrived to London. Then, why did he win his bet?
Phileas Fogg began his journey around the world on October 2, 1872. He left London at 8:45 PM, and went to the East. After visiting many countries all around the world, Phileas believed he arrived London on December 21 at 8:50. That is to say, with a delay of 5 minutes. Therefore, he thought he had lost his bet. Finally, Fogg discovered that he really arrived on December 20 at 8:50, after 79 days, so he had won his wager! The explanation is: Phileas, without suspecting it, had gained one day, because he went to the East. For each degree he travelled to the East, he gained four minutes. So, since the circumference of the Earth has 360 degrees, this makes 360×4=1440 minutes or 24 hours!
8. Which are the two best-known Jules Verne titles worldwide?
The two best-known titles are Twenty thousands leagues under the seas and Around the world in 80 days. These have been adapted to theatre, cinema, television series, and they have been reprinted in many languages all around the world many times.
9. What was the difference between Verne’s stories and the ones of Herbert George Wells?
Jules Verne wrote mainly adventures stories, Wells wrote Science Fiction stories. Wells is the true “father of SF”. Verne described his machines based upon certain knowledge of his time, and he matured that idea or that knowledge, and developed it. Verne explains his inventions very well, and with a lot of details. Wells, on the other hand, invented his machines, which were not based on any scientific knowledge of his time. His machines were constructed with materials that did not exist, and the phenomena that occur in Wells’ stories are not quite explained. They are just Science fiction.
10. Which novels gave rise to legal processes?
Due to his success, Verne had to face the attacks of two unsuccessful and embittered writers. The first, Edouard Cadol pretended to be the co-author of Around the world in 80 days, after a brief and unsuccessful collaboration with Verne to write a draft for a play, before the publication of the novel. Finally, there was not any lawsuit, but Cadol had got as many rights over the play as Jules Verne himself.
After the publication of Journey to the centre of the Earth, Verne was attacked by Léon Delmas, who had published some short stories under the name of René de Pont-Jest. He accused Verne of having plagiarized his short story titled La tête de Mimer that was published in a magazine that Verne said he had not ever read. The “plagiarism” was just a matter of a coincidence regarding the journey to the centre of the Earth. While Pont-Jest described the lunar shade, Verne talked about the solar shade. The lawsuit was held in 1877 and Verne was found innocent.
In Facing the flag, written in 1897, Jules Verne wrote about the inventor Thomas Roch, whose character was inspired by the French chemist Eugène Turpin, who had invented the melinite (an explosive), and tried to sell it to the French government in 1885. The government refused. In the novel, Roch had a nervous breakdown after several countries refused to buy his invention. In Verne’s correspondance with his brother Paul, he frequently refers to “le Turpin”, meaning his character Roch, or the novel Facing the flag. Verne’s Roch had an astonishing resemblance with Turpin. Then, Eugène Turpin sued Jules Verne, who was defended by Raymond Poincaré. Finally, Verne was found innocent of those imputations. However, a letter from Jules to Paul suggested that he did indeed base Roch on Turpin.
11. Which author is the subject of the only one literary study Jules Verne ever wrote?
Jules Verne published in 1864 an article in four chapters named Edgar Poe and his works and it was published in the magazine Musée des familles. In this article he made an in-depth analysis of the works of the famous North American writer Edgar Allan Poe. In fact, Verne’s novel The sphinx of the ice is a sequel to Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and also it was said that Verne was inspired by a Poe’s tale titled Three Sundays in a week to write his famous book Around the world in 80 days. Also, the cryptograms or secret messages that had an important role in novels such as Journey to the centre of the Earth, The jangada, and even The children of captain Grant could have been inspired by Poe’s The gold bug.
12. Which Jules Verne’s novel was the first to be made into a film?
It was Voyage dans la Lune filmed by Georges Méliès in 1902. It was inspired by Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon.
13. I have an old book published in the nineteenth century, American first edition. What’s it worth?
We don’t know. The worth may vary. It depends on many things: the condition of the book (if it is new or used), the kind of the edition, etc... Also, an old book is seldom the first edition. The terms original or first edition have a very precise meaning. For example, an original edition of a book written by Jules Verne is not the same as a first illustrated one. For better information, we suggest you to consult your local antiquarian.
14. I have a copy of Clovis Dardentor, signed by Jules Verne himself. Is this book something special?
No. This signature was reproduced in all copies of this novel, in the original edition. All Hetzel illustrated in-octavo editions of Clovis Dardentor have Jules Verne’s signature printed on the first page. He dedicated this book to his three grandsons.
15. Did Jules Verne ever collaborate with someone to write one of his works?
Yes, he did. He collaborated with Adolphe d’Ennery who turned some of his novels into plays. He also collaborated with Gabriel Marcel, when he was writing his History of the famous travels and travellers. Marcel was a librarian at the National Library of Paris. Verne could speak and read only French and much of the information he had to take into account was written in foreign languages. So it was necessary to organize cooperation with Marcel. They also collaborated when Verne was writing La conquête économique et scientifique du globe, though this work was neither finished nor published. Besides, it is said that Verne wrote the novel titled The wreck of the Cynthia (this novel does not belong to the series known as Extraordinary Journeys) in collaboration with André Laurie, but it has been said recently that he only did a validation work, and his name was only added for commercial purposes. Before that, Verne had deeply changed two manuscripts written by André Laurie. Those two texts became two novels signed by Jules Verne: The 500 million of the Begum and The star of the South. Verne collaborated with Théophile Lavallée when the latter was writing his Géographie illustrée de la France et de ses colonies. Lavallée died in 1866 and he only had written the introduction. Hetzel asked Jules Verne to finish the work. To be complete, we also might mention the great number of specific collaborations that Verne received to write some of his novels. Some of them are known; for instance those that he received from two mathematicians: his cousin Henri Garcet and Albert Badoureau. The first did all the mathematical calculations for From the Earth to the Moon and the latter helped in the writing of Topsy turvy. Paul Verne, his brother, was another collaborator. He collaborated in all the novels concerning the sea and the marine. Finally, Hetzel must also be considered as a regular collaborator. He was the first reader of Verne’s manuscripts. The correspondence between them - currently under publication - and the analysis of the original manuscripts shows that Hetzel made many suggestions and even he imposed some of the changes that deeply modified the original writings.
16. I have found a date paradox in three novels written by Jules Verne. What’s wrong there?
It was no mistake. At first view, it seems that Jules Verne made a mistake while wanting to make coincide the action of three of his novels: The children of captain Grant, Twenty thousand leagues under the seas and The mysterious island. In The children of Captain Grant, history took place between 1864 and 1865. At the end of the story, in March 1865, Ayrton is abandoned in an island. In The mysterious island, the action took place between 1865 and 1869. It was in December 1866 that Cyrus Smith and his friends found Ayrton. He declared them he had been abandoned in this island twelve years ago, that is to say since 1854. When Ayrton made the narration of his story, he situated the action between 1854 and 1855 and more precisely he had been abandoned on March 18, 1855. That was ten years before the date mentioned in The children of captain Grant. Also, in The mysterious island, at the end of the novel (1869), Cyrus Smith told Nemo that he knew him, because he had read the book written by Aronnax during his voyage aboard the Nautilus. Then Nemo said that it had been sixteen years since this man had left the Nautilus. That brings us back to 1853. However, the action of Twenty thousand leagues under the seas took place in 1866. The truth is that both, Jules Hetzel and Jules Verne knew about this paradox and they accepted it. There are two footnotes in the original French edition of The mysterious island where the publisher admitted the existence of date discrepancies with both The children of captain Grant and Twenty thousand leagues under the seas. The first note is part of chapter XVII of the second volume. There, Ayrton told his story to Cyrus Smith. The footnote read that these events told by Ayrton, were taken from a previous story titled The children of captain Grant, and they added that the reader would finally understand why the real dates couldn’t be given originally. The second note appeared in chapter XVI of the third volume. There, Nemo told his story. This footnote accepted the paradox between the dates in Twenty thousand leagues under the seas and the story of The mysterious island, and the reader was invited to see the previous note written in the second volume.
Source: https://www.stromberg-gymnasium.de/unterricht/faecher/m/bilingual/Jules%20Verne/FAQ%20Jules%20Verne.doc
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