Q 01/05

In which port city on the Loire was Jules Verne born in 1828?

A) Le Havre

B) Nantes

C) Bordeaux

D) Marseille

Answer · why

B) Nantes

Nantes put ships at his door: Verne recalled a boyhood fascination with the river's merchant vessels, and he and his brother Paul explored it in leaky...

Q 02/05

Which Verne hero bets £20,000 that he can travel around the world in eighty days?

A) Captain Nemo

B) Phileas Fogg

C) Professor Lidenbrock

D) Michael Strogoff

Answer · why

B) Phileas Fogg

Phileas Fogg stakes half his fortune on the bet and spends nearly all of the other half on the road, so winning leaves him hardly any richer than when...

Q 03/05

What is the name of Captain Nemo's submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea?

A) Nautilus

B) Argonaut

C) Leviathan

D) Albatross

Answer · why

A) Nautilus

Nautilus was a borrowed name: Robert Fulton had shown a real submarine called Nautilus to the French government around 1800, decades before Verne wrot...

Q 04/05

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

A) To join the navy against his father's wishes

B) To bring back a coral necklace for his cousin

C) To escape the boarding school he hated

D) To find his uncle lost at sea in the Indies

Answer · why

B) To bring back a coral necklace for his cousin

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 biogr...

Q 05/05

In From the Earth to the Moon, how do Verne's travellers leave the Earth?

A) Fired from a giant cannon

B) Lifted by a huge balloon

C) Carried up by a rocket

D) Flung by a steel spring

Answer · why

A) Fired from a giant cannon

Fired from a giant cannon, because the men behind the plan are American artillerymen left idle when the Civil War ends. Their Baltimore club wants som...