From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Born	Jules Gabriel Verne 8 February 1828(1828-02-08) Nantes, France
Died	24 March 1905 (aged 77) Amiens, France
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	French
Genres	Science fiction, adventure novel
Notable work(s)	A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, From the Earth to the Moon,The Mysterious Island
Influences Edgar Allan Poe, Alexandre Dumas, père, Victor Hugo, Daniel Defoe, Johann David Wyss, Józef Sękowski
Influenced H.G. Wells, Julio Cortázar, Emilio Salgari, Louis Boussenard, William Golding, Paschal Grousset, Donald G. Payne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs

Verne's signature

Jules Gabriel Verne (French pronunciation: [ʒyl vɛʁn]; 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.^[1] Verne is the second most translated author of all time, only behind Agatha Christie, with 4223 translations, according to Index Translationum.^[2] 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.^[3] 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 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.^[4]

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.^[5]

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 3 August 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, George 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.^[6] 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.^[7]

A typical Hetzel front cover for a Jules Verne book. The edition is Les Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras au Pôle Nord, type "Aux deux éléphants".

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.

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.

Verne in 1892

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 the Dreyfus Affair and was anti-Dreyfusard,^[8][9] although the theme of wrongful conviction and judicial corruption found in "The Kip Brothers", one of his last novels, suggests he may have become a Dreyfusard later in life.^[10] 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 1993.

Death

Jules Verne died on 24 March, 1905 and was buried in the La Madeleine Cemetery in Amiens. In 2008, efforts were initiated to have him reburied in the Panthéon, alongside France's other literary giants.

Reputation in English-speaking countries

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, the rare portrayals of Germans are positive in pre-1871 works such as Journey to the Centre of the Earth, in which almost all the protagonists, including the sympathetic first-person narrator, 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. 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

A mural in Tampa, Florida commemorating Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.

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, even electricity, and other modern conveniences very similar to their real world counterparts.

Another example is From the Earth to the Moon, which, apart from using a space gun instead of a rocket, 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.^[11]

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 Harding whether the latter believes that islands (like the one they are on) are made especially to be ideal ones for castaways. In From the Earth to the Moon, it was the material used in the creation of the cannon, although in this case it was probably poetic license in order to make the description of the making of the gun 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^[12]
• (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

• (1874) Le Docteur Ox; English translation: Doctor Ox (1874)
• (1910) Hier et Demain; English translation: Yesterday and Tomorrow (1965)

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 (art criticism); 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.

See also

About Verne:

• Jules Verne Museum in Nantes, France

Other science-fiction pioneers:

• Paschal Grousset, another French science-fiction author
• Emilio Salgari, Opéra-bouffean Italian science-fiction and adventure writer
• Osip Senkovsky, Polish-Russian journalist and entertainer
• Oshikawa Shunro, a Japanese science-fiction pioneer

Inspired by Verne:

• The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne TV series
• Jules Verne ATV, an ATV named after Verne
• Steampunk, a style that took inspiration from Verne.
• Vernian Process, a music project inspired in name and theme.

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

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

• Works by Jules Verne at Project Gutenberg
• Jules Verne at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Les Voyages Extraordinaires — list of Verne works Compiled by Dennis Kytasaari
• Jules Verne's works: text, concordances and frequency list
• Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography
• A Chronology of Jules Verne
• Biography of Jules Verne
• Jules Verne: A Reappraisal, by William Butcher
• Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography, by Herbert R. Lottman — a review
• A Jules Verne Centennial: 1905–2005
• List of audio books at LibriVox by Verne
• 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: 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.

From Wikiquote

An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish.

Jules Verne (February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905) was a French writer best known as a pioneering author in science fiction.

Sourced

Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)

Voyage au Centre de la Terre. Trans. Frederick Amadeus Malleson (1877). French text here. English text here.

• Les ondulations de ces montagnes infinies, que leurs couches de neige semblaient rendre écumantes, rappelaient à mon souvenir la surface d'une mer agitée. Si je me retournais vers l'ouest, l'Océan s'y développait dans sa majestueuse étendue, comme une continuation de ces sommets moutonneux. Où finissait la terre, où commençaient les flots, mon oeil le distinguait à peine.

  Je me plongeais ainsi dans cette prestigieuse extase que donnent les hautes cimes, et cette fois, sans vertige, car je m'accoutumais enfin à ces sublimes contemplations. Mes regards éblouis se baignaient dans la transparente irradiation des rayons solaires, j'oubliais qui j'étais, où j'étais, pour vivre de la vie des elfes ou des sylphes, imaginaires habitants de la mythologie scandinave; je m'enivrais de la volupté des hauteurs, sans songer aux abîmes dans lesquels ma destinée allait me plonger avant peu.

  • The undulation of these infinite numbers of mountains, whose snowy summits make them look as if covered by foam, recalled to my remembrance the surface of a storm-beaten ocean. If I looked towards the west, the ocean lay before me in all its majestic grandeur, a continuation as it were, of these fleecy hilltops. Where the earth ended and the sea began it was impossible for the eye to distinguish.

    I soon felt that strange and mysterious sensation which is awakened in the mind when looking down from lofty hilltops, and now I was able to do so without any feeling of nervousness, having fortunately hardened myself to that kind of sublime contemplation. I wholly forgot who I was, and where I was. I became intoxicated with a sense of lofty sublimity, without thought of the abysses into which my daring was soon about to plunge me.

    • Ch. XVI: Boldly down the crater

• Mais aux grandes douleurs le ciel mêle incessamment les grandes joies, et il réservait au professeur Lidenbrock une satisfaction égale à ses désespérants ennuis.
  • But Heaven never sends unmixed grief, and for Professor Liedenbrock there was a satisfaction in store proportioned to his desperate anxieties.
    • Ch. XVI: Boldly down the crater

• I would have bartered a diamond mine for a glass of pure spring water!
  • Ch. XVII: Vertical descent
    • This sentence, from in an early translation of the book (Griffith and Farran, 1871), has no source in the original French text.

• Les objets extérieurs ont une action réelle sur le cerveau. Qui s’enferme entre quatre murs finit par perdre la faculté d’associer les idées et les mots. Que de prisonniers cellulaires devenus imbéciles, sinon fous, par le défaut d’exercice des facultés pensantes.
  • External objects produce decided effects upon the brain. A man shut up between four walls soon loses the power to associate words and ideas together. How many prisoners in solitary confinement become idiots, if not mad, for want of exercise for the thinking faculty!
    • Ch. XXVI: The worst peril of all

• Je ne puis peindre mon désespoir ; nul mot de la langue humaine ne rendrait mes sentiments. J’étais enterré vif, avec la perspective de mourir dans les tortures de la faim et de la soif.
  • To describe my despair would be impossible. No words could tell it. I was buried alive, with the prospect before me of dying of hunger and thirst.
    • Ch. XXVII: Lost in the bowels of the earth

• La science, mon garçon, est faite d’erreurs, mais d’erreurs qu’il est bon de commettre, car elles mènent peu à peu à la vérité.
  • Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.
    • Ch. XXXI: Preparations for a voyage of discovery

• Hunger, prolonged, is temporary madness! The brain is at work without its required food, and the most fantastic notions fill the mind. Hitherto I had never known what hunger really meant. I was likely to understand it now.
  • Ch. XLI: The great explosion and the rush down below
    • These sentences, from an early translation of the book (Griffith and Farran, 1871), have no source in the original French text.

• L’homme est ainsi fait, que sa santé est un effet purement négatif; une fois le besoin de manger satisfait, on se figure difficilement les horreurs de la faim; il faut les éprouver, pour les comprendre.
  • Man is so constituted that health is a purely negative state. Hunger once satisfied, it is difficult for a man to imagine the horrors of starvation; they cannot be understood without being felt.
    • Ch. XLII: Headlong speed upward through the horrors of darkness

From the Earth to the Moon (1865)

De la Terre à la Lune. Trans. French text here. English text here.

• Or, quand un Américain a une idée, il cherche un second Américain qui la partage. Sont-ils trois, ils élisent un président et deux secrétaires. Quatre, ils nomment un archiviste, et le bureau fonctionne. Cinq, ils se convoquent en assemblée générale, et le club est constitué.
  • Now when an American has an idea, he directly seeks a second American to share it. If there be three, they elect a president and two secretaries. Given four, they name a keeper of records, and the office is ready for work; five, they convene a general meeting, and the club is fully constituted.
    • Ch. I: The Gun Club

• Rien ne saurait étonner un Américain. On a souvent répété que le mot "impossible" n’était pas français; on s’est évidemment trompé de dictionnaire. En Amérique, tout est facile, tout est simple, et quant aux difficultés mécaniques, elles sont mortes avant d’être nées. Entre le projet Barbicane et sa réalisation, pas un véritable Yankee ne se fût permis d’entrevoir l’apparence d’une difficulté. Chose dite, chose faite.
  • Nothing can astound an American. It has often been asserted that the word "impossible" is not a French one. People have evidently been deceived by the dictionary. In America, all is easy, all is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise. Between Barbicane's proposition and its realization no true Yankee would have allowed even the semblance of a difficulty to be possible. A thing with them is no sooner said than done.
    • Ch. III: Effect of the President's Communication

• L’astre des nuits, par sa proximité relative et le spectacle rapidement renouvelé de ses phases diverses, a tout d’abord partagé avec le Soleil l’attention des habitants de la Terre.
  • The moon, by her comparative proximity, and the constantly varying appearances produced by her several phases, has always occupied a considerable share of the attention of the inhabitants of the earth.
    • Ch. V: The Romance of the Moon

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)

Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. French text here. English text here.

• L'esprit humain se plaît à ces conceptions grandioses d'êtres surnaturels. Or la mer est précisément leur meilleur véhicule, le seul milieu où ces géants près desquels les animaux terrestres, éléphants ou rhinocéros, ne sont que des nains — puissent se produire et se développer.
  • The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings. And the sea is precisely their best vehicle, the only medium through which these giants (against which terrestrial animals, such as elephants or rhinoceroses, are as nothing) can be produced or developed
    • Part I, ch. II: Pro and Con

• Qui dit Canadien, dit Français.
  • Whoever calls himself Canadian calls himself French.
    • Part I, ch. IV: Ned Land

• Cet enlèvement, si brutalement exécuté, s'était accompli avec la rapidité de l'éclair... Un rapide frisson me glaça l'épiderme. A qui avions-nous affaire ? Sans doute à quelques pirates d'une nouvelle espèce qui exploitaient la mer à leur façon.

  A peine l'étroit panneau fut-il refermé sur moi, qu'une obscurité profonde m'enveloppa.

  • This forcible abduction, so roughly carried out, was accomplished with the rapidity of lightning. I shivered all over. Whom had we to deal with? No doubt some new sort of pirates, who explored the sea in their own way. Hardly had the narrow panel closed upon me, when I was enveloped in darkness.
    • Part I, ch. VIII: Mobilis in Mobili

• Nous étions seuls. Où ? Je ne pouvais le dire, à peine l'imaginer. Tout était noir, mais d'un noir si absolu, qu'après quelques minutes, mes yeux n'avaient encore pu saisir une de ces lueurs indéterminées qui flottent dans les plus profondes nuits.
  • We were alone. Where, I could not say, hardly imagine. All was black, and such a dense black that, after some minutes, my eyes had not been able to discern even the faintest glimmer.
    • Part I, ch. VIII: Mobilis in Mobili

• A quoi bon discuter une proposition semblable, quand la force peut détruire les meilleurs arguments.
  • What good would it be to discuss such a proposition, when force could destroy the best arguments?
    • Part I, ch. X: The Man of the Seas

• La mer est tout! Elle couvre les sept dixièmes du globe terrestre. Son souffle est pur et sain. C'est l'immense désert où l'homme n'est jamais seul, car il sent frémir la vie à ses côtés. La mer n'est que le véhicule d'une surnaturelle et prodigieuse existence; elle n'est que mouvement et amour.
  • The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion.
    • Part I, ch. X: The Man of the Seas

• Les différences chronologiques s'effacent dans la mémoire des morts.
  • In the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced.
    • Part I, ch. X: The Man of the Seas (Part I, ch. XI in the French text)

• Le Nautilus en brisait les eaux sous le tranchant de son éperon, après avoir accompli près de dix mille lieues en trois mois et demi, parcours supérieur à l'un des grands cercles de la terre. Où allions-nous maintenant, et que nous réservait l'avenir?
  • The Nautilus was piercing the water with its sharp spur, after having accomplished nearly ten thousand leagues in three months and a half, a distance greater than the great circle of the earth. Where were we going now, and what was reserved for the future?
    • Part II, ch. VIII: Vigo Bay

• On ne saurait empêcher l'équilibre de produire ses effets. On peut braver les lois humaines, mais non résister aux lois naturelles.
  • We cannot prevent equilibrium from producing its effects. We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.
    • Part II, ch. XV: Accident or Incident?

• Voici la conclusion de ce voyage sous les mers. Ce qui se passa pendant cette nuit, comment le canot échappa au formidable remous du Maelstrom, comment Ned Land, Conseil et moi, nous sortîmes du gouffre, je ne saurai le dire.
  • Thus ends the voyage under the seas. What passed during that night — how the boat escaped from the eddies of the maelstrom — how Ned Land, Conseil, and myself ever came out of the gulf, I cannot tell.
    • Part II, ch. XXIII: Conclusion

The Fur Country, or Seventy Degrees North Latitude (1872)

Le pays des fourrures. Trans. N. D'Anvers. English text here. French text here.

• Hobson constata, non sans une certaine appréhension, que les ours étaient nombreux sur cette partie du territoire. Il était rare, en effet, qu'un jour se passât sans qu'un couple de ces formidables carnassiers ne fût signalé. Bien des coups de fusil furent adressés à ces terribles visiteurs. Tantôt, c'était une bande de ces ours bruns qui sont fort communs sur toute la région de la Terre-Maudite, tantôt, une de ces familles d'ours polaires d'une taille gigantesque, que les premiers froids amèneraient sans doute en plus grand nombre aux environs du cap Bathurst. Et, en effet, dans les récits d'hivernage, on peut observer que les explorateurs ou les baleiniers sont plusieurs fois par jour exposés à la rencontre de ces carnassiers.
  • Hobson perceived with some alarm that bears were very numerous in the neighbourhood and that scarcely a day passed without one or more of them being sighted. Sometimes these unwelcome visitors belonged to the family of brown bears, so common throughout the whole "Cursed Land"; but now and then a solitary specimen of the formidable Polar bear warned the hunters what dangers they might have to encounter as soon as the first frost should drive great numbers of these fearful animals to the neighborhood of Cape Bathurst. Every book of Arctic explorations is full of accounts of the frequent perils in which travelers and whalers are exposed from the ferocity of these animals.
    • Ch. 14: Some Excursions

Around the World in Eighty Days (1873)

Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours. French text here. English text here.

• Personne n'ignore que l'Inde — ce grand triangle renversé dont la base est au nord et la pointe au sud — comprend une superficie de quatorze cent mille milles carrés, sur laquelle est inégalement répandue une population de cent quatre-vingts millions d'habitants. Le gouvernement britannique exerce une domination réelle sur une certaine partie de cet immense pays. Il entretient un gouverneur général à Calcutta, des gouverneurs à Madras, à Bombay, au Bengale, et un lieutenant-gouverneur à Agra.

  Mais l'Inde anglaise proprement dite ne compte qu'une superficie de sept cent mille milles carrés et une population de cent à cent dix millions d'habitants. C'est assez dire qu'une notable partie du territoire échappe encore à l'autorité de la reine; et, en effet, chez certains rajahs de l'intérieur, farouches et terribles, l'indépendance indoue est encore absolue.

  • Everybody knows that the great reversed triangle of land, with its base in the north and its apex in the south, which is called India, embraces fourteen hundred thousand square miles, upon which is spread unequally a population of one hundred and eighty millions of souls. The British Crown exercises a real and despotic dominion over the larger portion of this vast country, and has a governor-general stationed at Calcutta, governors at Madras, Bombay, and in Bengal, and a lieutenant-governor at Agra.

    But British India, properly so called, only embraces seven hundred thousand square miles, and a population of from one hundred to one hundred and ten millions of inhabitants. A considerable portion of India is still free from British authority; and there are certain ferocious rajahs in the interior who are absolutely independent.

    • Ch. X: In Which Passepartout Is Only Too Glad to Get Off with the Loss of His Shoes

• Qu'un Anglais comme lui fît le tour du monde un sac à la main, passe encore; mais une femme ne pouvait entreprendre une pareille traversée dans ces conditions.
  • It was all very well for an Englishman like Mr. Fogg to make the tour of the world with a carpet-bag; a lady could not be expected to travel comfortably under such conditions.
    • Ch. XX: In Which Fix Comes Face to Face with Phileas Fogg

• Phileas Fogg avait gagné son pari. Il avait accompli en quatre-vingts jours ce voyage autour du monde ! Il avait employé pour ce faire tous les moyens de transport, paquebots, railways, voitures, yachts, bâtiments de commerce, traîneaux, éléphant. L'excentrique gentleman avait déployé dans cette affaire ses merveilleuses qualités de sang-froid et d'exactitude. Mais après ? Qu'avait-il gagné à ce déplacement ? Qu'avait-il rapporté de ce voyage ?

  Rien, dira-t-on ? Rien, soit, si ce n'est une charmante femme, qui — quelque invraisemblable que cela puisse paraître — le rendit le plus heureux des hommes !

  En vérité, ne ferait-on pas, pour moins que cela, le Tour du Monde ?

  • Phileas Fogg had won his wager, and had made his journey around the world in eighty days. To do this he had employed every means of conveyance — steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, elephants. The eccentric gentleman had throughout displayed all his marvellous qualities of coolness and exactitude. But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey?

    Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men!

    Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?

    • Ch. XXXVII: In Which It Is Shown that Phileas Fogg Gained Nothing by His Tour Around the World, Unless It Were Happiness

The Mysterious Island (1874)

L’Île mystérieuse. French text here. English text here.

• Mieux vaut mettre les choses au pis tout de suite, répondit l’ingénieur, et ne se réserver que la surprise du mieux.
  • "Better to put things at the worst at first," replied the engineer, "and reserve the best for a surprise."
    • Part I, ch. IX

• La nécessité est, d’ailleurs, de tous les maîtres, celui qu’on écoute le plus et qui enseigne le mieux.
  • Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.
    • Part I, ch. XVII

• L’homme qui "sait" réussit là où d’autres végéteraient et périraient inévitablement.
  • An energetic man will succeed where an indolent one would vegetate and inevitably perish.
    • Part I, ch. XIX

• L’homme n’est jamais ni parfait, ni content.
  • Man is never perfect, nor contented.
    • Part I, ch. XXII

• Malheur à qui est seul, mes amis, et il faut croire que l’isolement a vite fait de détruire la raison.
  • It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it must be believed that solitude can quickly destroy reason.
    • Part II, ch. XV

• Les hommes, Pencroff, si savants qu’ils puissent être, ne pourront jamais changer quoi que ce soit à l’ordre cosmographique établi par Dieu même.

  — Et pourtant, ajouta Pencroff, qui montra une certaine difficulté à se résigner, le monde est bien savant! Quel gros livre, monsieur Cyrus, on ferait avec tout ce qu’on sait!

  — Et quel plus gros livre encore avec tout ce qu’on ne sait pas, répondit Cyrus Smith.

  • "Men, Pencroft, however learned they may be, can never change anything of the cosmographical order established by God Himself."

    "And yet," added Pencroft, "the world is very learned. What a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!"

    "And what a much bigger book still with all that is not known!" answered Harding.

    • Part III, ch. XIV

• Ainsi est-il du cœur de l’homme. Le besoin de faire œuvre qui dure, qui lui survive, est le signe de sa supériorité sur tout ce qui vit ici-bas. C’est ce qui a fondé sa domination, et c’est ce qui la justifie dans le monde entier.
  • So is man's heart. The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will survive him, is the origin of his superiority over all other living creatures here below. It is this which has established his dominion, and this it is which justifies it, over all the world.
    • Part III, ch. XV

• La civilisation ne recule jamais, et il semble qu’elle emprunte tous les droits à la nécessité.
  • Civilization never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards.
    • Part III, ch. XVI

• Celui qui se trompe dans une intention qu’il croit bonne, on peut le combattre, on ne cesse pas de l’estimer.
  • He who is mistaken in an action which he sincerely believes to be right may be an enemy, but retains our esteem.
    • Part III, ch. XVI

The Survivors of the Chancellor (1875)

Le Chancellor. Trans. Ellen Frewer. French text here. English text here.

• Les poëtes sont comme les proverbes: l’un est toujours là pour contredire l’autre.
  • Poets are like proverbs: you can always find one to contradict another.
    • Ch. 5: An Unusual Route

Unsourced

I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.

Anything a man can imagine, another can create

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Jules Verne

Wikisource has original works written by or about:

Jules Verne

• Works by Jules Verne at Project Gutenberg
• Jules Verne at French Wikisource

From LoveToKnow 1911