Lizeth Ramirez
Mrs. Boyer
English 4-4
15 November 2018
Jules Verne
Do you believe that it is possible to fall in love with literature? For one person it was, and that would be the one and only Jules Gabriel Verne. Verne was born on February 8, 1828 in Nantes, France. His relationship with his father was nothing out of the ordinary except for the fact that Vernes father urged him to go to law school. Eventually Verne was sent by his parents to study law in Paris, France. It was clear that he did not want to attend the school and started writing short stories and some poetry to pass the time. He earned his law degree in 1849 and stayed in Paris to pursue his artistic endeavors. His career really took off in 1850 when his first one-act play “Broken Straws” was performed, which gained him more recognition. Soon after, he got married to a young widow, who had two daughters, in 1857. He really struggled, financially, to make ends meet. Because of this, he found a job as a stockbroker. He refused to give up his artistic aspirations. Later in his life, he passed away in Amiens France at the age of 77, and he was a very successful man that knew he was capable of doing anything he set his mind to. He had a tough life ,though, it wasn’t easy for him.Verne was most famous for writing british literature, he was a fiction novelist who wrote some of the following novels “Around the world in eighty days” and “Twenty thousand leagues under the sea”. He was remembered as“The Father of Science Fiction”.
Vernes family consisted of his mother and father Sophie Allote de la Fuye and Pierre Verne. He had three sisters and two brothers. When he married his spouse, Honorine de Viane Morel she already had two daughters of her own named Valentine Morel and Suzanne Morel. But once they were married they never had any kids together. Jules was raised in a middle class family, his parents wanted him to achieve the middle class respectability. He was very rebellious, who was not successful until he got into his own world of imagination, he knew this had happened as his feelings would start to show in many of his works as an adult. As Jules was growing he made a promise to his parents saying that he “would travel only in imagination” which was a promise that his parents didn’t understand or believe what he was saying, later on figured out what he was trying to say by that promise. Verne’s personality was very different from the rest of his family members, he was very sure of his abilities. His extreme abilities of joking and making practical jokes. According to the website (https://www.notablebiographies.com/Tu-We/Verne-Jules.html) “In 1886 Verne was the victim of a shooting accident, which left him diasbled. The man that shot him proved to be a nephew who was suffering from mental instability. The incident served to reinforce Verne’s natural tendency towards depression. Although he served on the city council of Amiens two years later he spent his old age in retirement. In 1902 he became partially blind and died on March 24, 1905 in Amiens.”
Verne’s writing career began with the very first fiction book titled “ Five weeks in a balloon, this was written after he took a journey over central Africa at the time where it was very unexplored. According to William Schoell, the author of the book “Remarkable Journeys The Story of Jules Verne” “The story of Five Weeks in a Balloon deals with three men — Doctor Samuel Ferguson of the Royal Geographical Society, his manservant Joe, and a Scotsman named Dick Kennedy– who cross Africa in a balloon and have a number of exciting adventures.” From so many books that Verne has written, the book that he put his life into was “Paris in the Twentieth Century” he put all of his life experiences, attitudes and frustrations into it. His book also included all of the names he was called from the citizens of Nantes just because he had left his employment of law to dedicate himself to writing. “ The citizens of Nantes thought that Jules was foolish for dropping the steady employment of law to dedicate himself to the risky career of literature” ( Remarkable Journeys The Story of Jules Verne)
As Jules would read and write literature he found out that he was starting to get fascinated by cryptography. He only realized he was into that when he found a coded message on a parchment hidden inside an old book, since that day that he read Poe’s story he knew he was into it, although many didn’t know what it actually was or what it was used for. It was just the art of writing or solving codes that’s all it was and it absolutely fascinated Jules.
After many years of writing, it was in the 1930’s when Jules was now a very famous and wealthy man, he stayed busy writing new stories because he felt the need to keep writing literature to get him even at a better place than where he already was, become a successful person. After many years of having financial problems in his family by this time he was finally stable and able to say that his family now enjoyed a comfortable standard way of living that depended on the numbers of books he would be selling. “He had waited so long for the kind of life that he and his family now enjoyed, but the stress was not over. Earlier he had worried about attaining success now he worried that it might slip away. He knew that the only way he would continue being financial stabled would be to continue working, Jules would take long walks to only start him coming up with plots and ideas for new stories which was the only way he would continue having his family in the same place they had finally gotten to after many years of complications. Sometimes his mind would be blank and would have absolutely no idea of what to write down, absolutely no ideas whatsoever it was just some of those days sometimes where he had to contin thinking and sometimes come up with nothing, he did so much research until he found a good topic to write about and hoping it would be successful. His process of writing was stated in the book (Remarkable Journeys The Story of Jules Verne) as “ I start by making a draft of a new story. I never began without knowing what the beginning, middle and end would be like, he told an interviewer.” “He first did a rough draft in pencil, leaving enough room in the margin for copious notes and additions. Then he would write a second draft in ink. He continued to make revision and corrections even after he received the first set of proofs or galleys from the publisher. Jules states that he does not have a clear view of his subject until he sees the work in print, doing as many as ten revisions not only sentences but chapters as well.
Since the very beginning of Jule’s life he struggled living with his parents, having problems being sent to law school, and struggling financially he was able to get some good benefits from going to law school only because that is where he started pursuing literature, Jules married his wife and after working and working, his hard work paid off he was finally able to give his family the life that he was not able to have when he lived with his parents due to them not having much money. He knew he wasn’t able to stop there though, he had to keep going and setting his mind to continue writing literature. That was the the great Jules Gabriel Verne
Works Cited
Schoell, William. Remarkable Journeys: the Story of Jules Verne. Morgan Reynolds Pub., 2002.
Evans, Arthur B. “Jules Verne.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 8 Oct. 2018, www.britannica.com/biography/Jules-Verne.
“The UnMuseum – Jules Verne.” The Seven Wonders – Hanging Gardens of Babylon, www.unmuseum.org/verne.htm.
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