50 Fun Facts About Jules Verne

In which French city was Jules Verne born in 1828?

He was born on Île Feydeau, then an artificial island in the Loire, in his grandmother's house.

What was the profession of Verne's father, Pierre?

He expected his firstborn to inherit the family practice and was dismayed when Jules refused it in 1852.

Verne's first teacher told pupils her long-lost husband would return like which fictional character?

The castaway theme, or robinsonade, stayed with him through The Mysterious Island and The School for Robinsons.

According to a famous legend, why did the 11-year-old Verne try to stow away on the ship Coralie?

The tale, in which his father caught him at Paimbœuf and made him promise to travel only in his imagination, was invented by his niece and first biographer.

What did Verne and his uncle play endlessly, later memorialised in The Will of an Eccentric?

The game shapes The Will of an Eccentric (1900), while the uncle's name went into Robur the Conqueror.

What grade did Verne receive in his baccalauréat at Rennes in 1846?

By 19 he was writing verse tragedies in the style of his idol, whom he could recite by the page.

What subject did Verne's father send him to Paris to study in 1847?

He got his licence en droit in 1851 while writing plays and haunting literary salons.

The young Verne memorised pages of Notre Dame de Paris. Whose dramatic works did he say most influenced him?

He arrived in Paris during the 1848 revolution and used family connections to enter the salons.

Verne's recurring facial paralysis was actually caused by what?

He never knew the cause; he also suffered violent stomach cramps that scholars now think were colitis.

Which famous author's son helped Verne revise his comedy The Broken Straws and get it staged in 1850?

The elder Dumas later encouraged Verne's idea of a 'novel of science'.

Which magazine published Verne's first short stories in 1851?

Editor Pitre-Chevalier wanted accessible science and geography; Verne called 'A Voyage in a Balloon' the first sign of the line he would follow.

What job did Verne take at the Théâtre Lyrique in the early 1850s?

It paid little or nothing, but let him stage comic operas with Aristide Hignard and Michel Carré.

What was the name of the bachelors' dining club Verne founded with ten friends?

'Eleven Without Women'; by the time he was a stockbroker, all eleven had married.

Which blind geographer and explorer became Verne's friend and steered him toward travel writing?

Arago had lost his sight completely in 1837 but kept travelling.

Whom did Verne marry in January 1857?

He met her at her sister's wedding, where he was best man, in the town he would later settle in.

What full-time job did Verne take after his marriage, writing early each morning before work?

A colleague recalled that he 'did better in repartee than in business'.

Where did Verne make his first trip outside France, in 1858?

It became the semi-autobiographical Backwards to Britain, unpublished until 1989.

What was the name of Verne's only biological son, born in 1861?

Verne was on a trip to Scandinavia and missed the birth; the son later married an actress against his wishes and ran up debts.

Hetzel, the publisher who took on Verne in 1862, already published which three authors?

He planned a family magazine mixing fiction with science and saw Verne as the ideal contributor.

What was Verne's first published novel, released by Hetzel on 31 January 1863?

He said he wrote it 'not as a story about ballooning, but as a story about Africa'.

How many volumes a year did Verne's long-term contract with Hetzel oblige him to deliver?

Hetzel bought each outright for a flat fee, and most were serialised first in his Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation.

What collective name did Hetzel give Verne's novel sequence in 1866?

The stated aim was to outline all the geographical, geological, physical and astronomical knowledge of modern science.

How did Verne change the ending of The Adventures of Captain Hatteras at Hetzel's request?

Early on he accepted almost every change Hetzel suggested; that changed after the fight over Captain Nemo.

Which pessimistic Verne novel did Hetzel reject as too subversive, leaving it unpublished until 1994?

His great-grandson found the manuscript in 1989.

Verne originally made Captain Nemo a scientist of which nationality, out for revenge on Russia?

Hetzel feared losing the Russian market; the compromise was to leave Nemo's past mysterious.

In which newspaper did Around the World in Eighty Days first appear in 1872?

Most of Verne's wealth came from the stage versions of it and of a Russian-courier drama written with Adolphe d'Ennery.

What name did Verne give to each of his successive boats?

Aboard the Saint-Michel III he sailed around Europe.

Who shot Verne twice with a pistol in March 1886, leaving him with a permanent limp?

The incident was kept out of the press; the 26-year-old spent the rest of his life in an asylum.

To which body was Verne elected in 1888, serving for fifteen years?

After the deaths of his mother and Hetzel in 1886 his books also grew darker.

In which city did Verne die in March 1905?

His street, 44 Boulevard Longueville, is now Boulevard Jules-Verne; he had diabetes and a stroke had paralysed his right side.

Who oversaw publication of Verne's posthumous novels and was later found to have rewritten them?

The Société Jules Verne eventually published the original versions at the end of the 20th century.

Which two authors sit either side of Verne in the world's most-translated rankings since 1979?

He has also been the most translated French author of the 2010s.

Which two other writers share Verne's unofficial title 'father of science fiction'?

Verne himself denied writing anything scientific: 'I have invented nothing.'

What did Verne call 'the great regret of my life'?

He was never nominated to the Académie Française and Zola dismissed him.

Which French thinker's essay 'The Nautilus and the Drunken Boat' helped restore Verne's reputation?

By 1978 one of his novels was on the French agrégation reading list.

Which Verne novel did the notorious 1872 Griffith & Farran 'translation' butcher, renaming characters?

Michael Crichton called it the worst example of Verne being 'ill-served by his English translators'.

Verne said he wrote his first novel not as a story about ballooning but as a story about what?

He added that he had no faith in the possibility of ever steering balloons.

Which Apollo 11 astronaut invoked Verne's Moon book in a TV broadcast on the way home in July 1969?

Verne's fictional craft also launched from Florida and splashed down in the Pacific, a century earlier.

Which movement glamorising 19th-century technology is Verne credited with helping inspire?

Ray Bradbury put it more simply: 'We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne.'

Verne was made a knight of which order in 1870, and promoted to officer in 1892?

Knight in 1870, Officer on 19 July 1892.

Which artificial language, mentioned in the drafts of The Barsac Mission, was Verne very interested in?

His son published the book in 1919 with the references removed.

How did Verne organise the research he copied out at the Bibliothèque nationale?

He kept the system for the rest of his life and credited it for his scientific accuracy.

Which US novelist's style shaped Verne's first story, The First Ships of the Mexican Navy?

Cooper's novels had 'deeply influenced' him.

How did Verne describe his position on military service in a letter to his father?

The 1851 sortition spared him, to his relief; his antiwar views lasted all his life.

Scholar Christian Chelebourg named Verne's theme of women married against their will after which mythological figure?

It traces back to Rose Herminie Grossetière, married off to a rich landowner in 1848 while Verne pined.

Which year did France declare 'Jules Verne Year'?

It marked the centenary of his death.

Which religious outlook did the Catholic-raised Verne gravitate towards?

His novels often invoke God or providence but rarely mention Christ.

Which luxury car maker names its top trim level the 'Jules Verne Edition'?

The brand cites him as an integral part of French cultural heritage.

Verne's brother Paul contributed to which 1874 collection alongside an account of a Mont Blanc climb?

Paul was born a year after Jules and shared his love of the sea.

What did critic Theodore L. Thomas blame in 1961 for the belief that Verne's novel is full of prophecy?

Verne himself called any link between his books and later inventions 'mere coincidence'.