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The Life and Works of Jules Verne

Information on the life of Jules Verne. His books, his family, and his wealth.


Jules Gabriel Verne was born in Nantes, France. He was the oldest of five children. He had three sisters: Mathilde, Anna and Marie, and one younger brother, Paul. His father was a lawyer and his mother came from a family of sea captains and ship builders. Jules and his brother were close all their lives. When they were boys, they liked to read travel magazines and invent journeys. When Jules was 12, he found a ship that was sailing to the West Indies. He paid the Cabin boy to take his place, but his father brought him home and his mother made him promise not to go to sea.
Jules? father wanted him to have the education of a lawyer. So, in 1948, Jules and a friend went to Paris. His father gave him money to support himself because he was supposed to be studying law, but he really wanted to write. He went to caf?s and rich people?s homes to find someone interested in his work. When his father came to visit him, he discovered Jules wasn?t studying law and stopped giving him money.
Jules kept writing to try to earn a living. He met two famous authors and tried to write a different type of novel, but he didn?t like it. So he wrote some short articles for a children?s magazine and had them published. He also had one of his plays performed and worked for a while as a law clerk.
When Jules went to a friend?s wedding, he met Honorine Morel who was a widow with two daughters. They got married and his father made him take a job as a stockbroker. His wife supported his writing even though she didn?t understand his scientific interests. She encouraged him to write, but he still had very little success. In 1881, his only child, Michel was born.
Jules continued to write many important books basing his novels on the latest scientific knowledge. His next extraordinary journey was The Adventures of Captain Hatteras in 1864. In the same year, he wrote Journey To the Centre of the Earth. After this, he took some time off to enjoy his wealth?going to theaters, parties, and being very social. Then he got bored with his life. His next book, From the Earth to the Moon, was about the first space capsule in history. The sequel was Around the Moon and it returned people safely to earth. In 1869, he wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea about the submarine the ?Nautilus? which was propelled by electricity. While in Paris in 1870, Jules saw that Cooks Travel Agency claimed that you could go around the world in 90 days. That gave him the idea for his most popular book ever, Around the World in Eighty Days.
Toward the end of his life, Jules realized that modern technology could be dangerous if people did not use it wisely. In 1889, he wrote with Michel, his son, The Diary of an American Journalist in the Year 2890. It is a story about New York in the future when the press is powerful. The city would have huge skyscrapers, rolling sidewalks, TV-telephones, and air cars and air trains. There would be electric calculating machines like computers, and advertising would be carried on clouds.
Before he died, Jules Verne wrote more than eighty novels. On March 24, 1905, Jules Verne died. When he died, the whole world mourned. He was the inventor of imaginary inventions and some that have even been invented. Jules Verne was an inspiration to everyone who read his work.






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