Jules Verne ( 1828 - 1905 )
Jules Verne was born on the 8th of February, 1828 in Île Feydeau, in the city of Nantes, France. His full name was Jules Gabriel Verne, and he was the first of five children born from the marriage between his father, Pierre Verne, a Parisian lawyer, who came from a lineage of jurists of the city of Provence and his mother, Sophie Allotte de la Fuÿe, of Breton and Scottish origin. After Jules, were born Paul in 1829, and three girls: Anna in 1836, Mathilde in 1839, and Marie in 1842.
On May 20, 1856 Verne went to Amiens to participate in a friend’s wedding. There, he met Honorine, and after eight months, on January 10, 1857 they got married and both went to Paris, where Verne spent some years. Four years later, on the 3rd of August of 1861, his first and only child Michel was born.
Jules Verne liked travelling. He made trips to different parts of the world, such as England, Scotland, Scandinavia, the United States, Portugal, Netherland, Germany, Denmark, Belgium and Italy. Some of his works were inspired by these trips.
Jules Verne was already 35 when his first novel, Five weeks in a balloon, was published in January 1863. He had written the novel in 1862, and at that point he began to visit all the Parisian editors. After some days he found Jules Hetzel, who was one of the most famous editors of the time. Verne gave the novel, titled Un voyage dans les airs, to Hetzel, who suggested the needed corrections to publish the manuscript. The publication had a brilliant success. Verne had stepped into a new field: Geography and Science into Literature. The two best-known titles are Twenty thousands leagues under the seas and Around the world in 80 days. These have been adapted to theatre, cinema, television series, and they have been reprinted in many languages all around the world many times.