Jules Verne short biography for children. Brilliant French writer - Jules Verne

Jules Verne was born on February 8, 1828 in France into a family of lawyers. He was the eldest of five children and, respecting his father, decided to devote himself to the legal profession. But his passion for books and writing constantly distracted him from his studies at the university. When Jules Verne turned 22, his play Broken Straws was staged in Historical theater» A. Dumas. Since then, the young writer forgot about jurisprudence and devoted himself to creativity. But in order to provide for himself and his family, he still had to work either as a secretary or as a stockbroker.

In the spring of 1856, Jules Verne, arriving at his friend's wedding, met Honorine de Vian. It was love at first sight. And, despite the fact that Honorina was previously married and, after the death of her husband, raised two children alone, the writer proposed to her.

After his marriage, Jules Verne sets sail, first to England and Scotland, then to Scandinavia. Traveling fascinates him so much that he begins to write books about travel. His first novel, “Five Weeks in a Balloon,” was a tremendous success among readers. Inspired by the sudden fame, the writer creates his most famous works: “The Children of Captain Grant” and “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and many others.

After the birth of their only son, Michel, the Vern family moves to a small port town and purchases a yacht with the telling name “San Michel”. Since then, Jules Verne no longer works on his books in his office, he writes on the deck of a yacht and continues to explore the world. During his life he visited the USA, Mediterranean countries, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. He wanted to sail on his yacht to Russia, but due to storms he was never able to do it. His travels are reflected in many of his books.

At the age of 58, Jules Verne has an accident - his mentally ill nephew wounds him in the ankle with a revolver. This incident put an end to his wanderings. But until the end of his life, the writer continued his travels in his own imagination and on the pages of books. Even senile blindness and diabetes did not stop him from writing - he composed and dictated texts.

Jules Verne died on March 24, 1905 at the age of 77, leaving behind him a huge collection of records from all kinds of fields scientific knowledge, which he kept throughout his life and used to write books. His love of science not only helped create charming images of the noble and slightly eccentric scientists - the heroes of his books, such as Paganel and Lidenbrock, but also predicted many scientific discoveries in his works. Long before the invention, the writer’s novels describe airplanes and helicopters, video communications and even television.

Biography of Jules Verne about the main thing

Back in 1828, Jules Verne was born in Paris. Since his father was a lawyer, Vern had no choice but to continue his father's work. Jules Verne studied law in Paris, but he was always drawn to literature. In 1850, His play "Broken Straws" staged at the theater was an extraordinary success.

In 1852, he got a job as a secretary to the theater director, and eventually as a stockbroker. In 1863, a novel from the series “ Extraordinary Adventures" He enjoyed great success from readers. Seeing the success of this genre, Verne wrote many works in the style of travel. In fact, the writer himself had a love of adventure. In 1865 he moved closer to the sea. In a hurry, he bought a yacht. On it he traveled to England, Scotland and other European countries. Later it became his floating office. In 1878, he traveled around the Mediterranean Sea on a yacht. He visited many places, wanted to swim to St. Petersburg, but a strong storm prevented him from achieving his goal. Many trips and what they saw on them formed the basis of travel novels.

But in 1886, Verne was wounded and all travel stopped. He was shot by a mentally ill relative.

Just before his death, Vern lost his sight, but new images and adventures continued to be born in his living mind. He dictated his novels. So, in 1905, the great writer and traveler died. After he died, many manuscripts survived and were published for many years. There are approximately 100 written literary works in total. Many of his novels have been filmed. Currently, his house, where he once lived, is a museum. In his novels, he described various inventions that in the future real life could be contemplated. Talk about him as a predictor.

For 5th, 6th grade. For children

Interesting Facts and dates from life

Verne Jules Gabriel

Life story

When a writer's name is surrounded by legends, rumors and speculation, this is fame. Jules Verne did not have to borrow it. Some considered him a professional traveler - Captain Verne, others argued that he never left his office and wrote all his books from hearsay, others, amazed by his immense creative imagination and multi-volume descriptions of distant lands, argued that “Jules Verne” - this is the name of a geographical society, whose members together write novels published under this name.

Some went to the extreme of deification and called Jules Verne the prophet of science, who predicted the invention of the submarine, controllable aeronautical machines, electric lighting, the telephone, and so on, and on, and on.

Based on immutable facts, we inform you that Jules Verne is a specific historical person who has specific parents and was born in a specific place. All his scientific and technical foresights are the result of brilliant self-education, which made it possible to guess future discoveries in the first timid hints and assumptions appearing in scientific literature, plus, of course, an innate gift of imagination and literary talent for presentation.

Jules Gabriel Verne was born on February 8, 1828 in the ancient city of Nantes, located on the banks of the Loire, near its mouth. This is one of the largest ports in France, from where ocean sailing ships made voyages to the distant shores of various countries.

Jules Verne was the eldest son of lawyer Pierre Verne, who had his own law office and assumed that over time his son would inherit his business. The writer's mother, nee Allott de la Fuye, came from an ancient family of Nantes shipowners and shipbuilders.

The romance of the port city led to the fact that at the age of eleven, Jules almost ran away to India, hiring himself as a cabin boy on the schooner Coralie, but was stopped in time. Being already famous writer, he admitted, “I must have been born a sailor and now I regret every day that a naval career did not fall to my lot from childhood.”

According to his father’s strict instructions, he had to become a lawyer, and he became one, graduating from the School of Law in Paris and receiving a diploma, but he did not return to his father’s law office, seduced by a more tempting prospect - literature and theater. He remained in Paris and, despite his half-starved existence (his father did not approve of “bohemians” and did not help him), he enthusiastically mastered his chosen path - he wrote comedies, vaudevilles, dramas, librettos comic operas, although no one managed to sell them.

Intuition led Jules Verne to the National Library, where he listened to lectures and scientific debates, made acquaintance with scientists and travelers, read and copied from books the information that interested him on geography, astronomy, navigation, and scientific discoveries, not yet quite understanding why he needed this may be needed.

In this state of literary attempts, expectations and premonitions, he reached the age of twenty-seven, still pinning his hopes on the theater. In the end, his father began to insist that he return home and get down to business, to which Jules Verne replied, “I have no doubt about my future. By the age of thirty-five I will have taken a strong place in literature.”

The forecast turned out to be accurate.

Finally, Jules Verne managed to publish several maritime and geographical stories. As an aspiring writer, he met Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, who began to patronize him. Perhaps it was Dumas, who at this time was creating a series of his adventure novels covering almost the entire history of France, advised to a young friend focus on the topic of travel. Jules Verne was inspired by the grandiose idea of ​​describing the entire globe - nature, animals, plants, peoples and customs. He decided to combine science and art and populate his novels with hitherto unprecedented heroes.

Jules Verne broke with the theater and completed his first novel in 1862 "Five Weeks in a Balloon". Dumas recommended that he contact the publisher of the youth “Journal of Education and Entertainment,” Etzel. The novel - about geographical discoveries in Africa made from a bird's eye view - was appreciated and published early next year. By the way, in it Jules Verne predicted the location of the sources of the Nile, which had not yet been discovered at that time.

Only after writing “Five Weeks in a Balloon” did Verne realize that his true calling was novels.

"Five Weeks in a Balloon" aroused great interest. Critics saw in this work the birth of a new genre - the “novel about science.” Etzel concluded with a successful debutant long-term contract- Jules Verne undertook to write two volumes a year.

Thus, a novelist was born from a Parisian lawyer. And with it a new genre appeared - science fiction.

Then, as if making up for lost time, he released masterpiece after masterpiece, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1864), “The Voyage of Captain Hatteras” (1865), “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865) and “Around the Moon” (1870). In these novels, the writer dealt with four problems that occupied the scientific world at that time: controlled aeronautics, conquest of the pole, riddles underworld, flights beyond the limits of gravity. Don't think that these novels are based on pure imagination. Thus, the prototype of Michel Ardant from the novel “From the Earth to the Moon” was a friend of Jules Verne - writer, artist and photographer Felix Tournachon, better known under the pseudonym Nadar. Passionate about aeronautics, he raised money for the construction of the Giant balloon and on October 4, 1864, made a test flight on it.

After the fifth novel - “The Children of Captain Grant” (1868) - Jules Verne decided to combine the written and conceived books into the “Extraordinary Journeys” series, and “The Children of Captain Grant” became the first book in a trilogy, which also included “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1870) and "The Mysterious Island" (1875). The trilogy is united by the pathos of its heroes - they are not only travelers, but also fighters against all forms of injustice: racism, colonialism, and the slave trade.

In 1872, Jules Verne left Paris forever and moved to the small provincial town of Amiens. From that time on, his entire biography boils down to one word - work. He himself admitted: “I need work. Work is my life function. When I don’t work, I don’t feel any life in myself.” Jules Verne was at his desk literally from dawn to dusk - from five in the morning to eight in the evening. He managed to write one and a half printed sheets per day (as biographers testify), which is equal to twenty-four book pages. Such results are hard to even imagine!

The novel (1872) was an extraordinary success, inspired by a magazine article proving that if a traveler has good vehicles, he will be able to travel around the globe in eighty days. This became possible after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1870, which significantly shortened the route from European seas to the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The writer calculated that you can even win one day if you use the geographical paradox described by Edgar Allan Poe in the novel “Three Sundays in One Week.” Jules Verne commented on this paradox as follows: “For three people in one week there can be three Sundays if the first one commits trip around the world, leaving London (or any other point) from west to east, the second - from east to west, and the third will remain in place. Having met again, they learn that for the first Sunday was yesterday, for the second it will come tomorrow, and for the third it is today.”

Jules Verne's novel inspired many travelers to test his assertion in reality, and the young American Nellie Vly circumnavigated the world in just seventy-two days. The writer greeted the enthusiast with a telegram.

In 1878, Jules Verne published the novel The Fifteen-Year-Old Captain, which protested against racial discrimination and became popular on all continents. The writer continued this theme in next novel“North vs. South” (1887) - from the history of the civil war of the 60s in America.

In 1885, Jules Verne, on the occasion of his birthday, received congratulations from all over the world. Among them was a letter from the American newspaper king Gordon Bennett. He asked to write a story specifically for American readers - with a prediction of the future of America.

Jules Berne fulfilled this request, but the story entitled “In the 29th century. One day of an American journalist in 2889” was never released in America. And there was a prediction - a curious action is taking place in Centropolis - the capital of the American dollar empire, dictating its will to other, even overseas, countries. The American Empire is opposed only by mighty Russia and the revived great China. England, annexed by America, has long become one of its states, and France ekes out a miserable, semi-independent existence. The entire Americanized hemisphere is governed by Francis Bennett, the owner and editor of the World Herald newspaper. This is how the French seer imagined the geopolitical balance of power a thousand years later.

Jules Verne was one of the first to raise the question of the moral side of scientific discoveries, a question that in the 20th century would acquire Shakespearean proportions about whether or not humanity should exist - in connection with the creation of atomic and hydrogen bombs. In a number of Jules Verne's novels - "The Five Hundred Million Begums" (1879), "The Master of the World" (1904) and others - a type of scientist appears who seeks to subjugate the entire world with the help of his inventions. In such works as “Targeting the Banner” (1896) and “The Extraordinary Adventures of the Varsak Expedition” (ed. 1914), the writer showed another tragedy, when a scientist becomes a tool of tyrants - and this went into the 20th century, leaving many examples of how a scientist in prison conditions he was forced to work on inventions of exterminating substances and weapons.

International fame came to Jules Verne after his first novel. In Russia, “Five Weeks in a Balloon” appeared in the same year as the French edition, and the first review of the novel, written by Saltykov-Shchedrin, was published not just anywhere, but in Nekrasov’s Sovremennik. “Jules Verne’s novels are excellent,” said Leo Tolstoy. - I read them as an adult, but still, I remember they delighted me. He is an amazing master in constructing an intriguing, exciting plot. And you should listen to how enthusiastically Turgenev speaks of him! I just don’t remember him admiring anyone else as much as Jules Verne.”

During his life, Jules Verne paved the way to the center of the globe ("Journey to the Center of the Earth"), flew around the moon ("From the Earth to the Moon"), traveled around the world along the 37th parallel ("Children of Captain Grant"), plunged into secrets underwater world(“Twenty thousand leagues under the sea”), lived for many years like Robinson on the “Mysterious Island”, circumnavigated the Earth by land and water in 80 days and performed many more feats for which, it seems, even a dozen would not be enough human lives. All this, of course, in their books.

This is what the writer Jules Verne was like. He was the father of science fiction, the brilliant predecessor of H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Kir Bulychev and our other favorite writers.

Leo Tolstoy’s drawings for Jules Verne’s novel “Around the World in Eighty Days,” which he made for children, are well known. Dmitry Mendeleev called the French writer a “scientific genius” and admitted that he re-read his books more than once. When the Soviet space rocket transmitted the first photographs to earth reverse side Of the moon, one of the craters located on that side was given the name “Jules Verne”.

Science has come a long way since the time of Jules Verne, and his books and heroes do not age. However, nothing surprising. This indicates that Jules Verne managed to realize his cherished idea of ​​combining science with art, and true art, as we know, is eternal.

Jules Gabriel Verne(French Jules Gabriel Verne; February 8, 1828, Nantes, France - March 24, 1905, Amiens, France) - French writer, classic of adventure literature, one of the founders of the science fiction genre. Member of the French Geographical Society. According to UNESCO statistics, Jules Verne's books rank second in terms of translation in the world, second only to the works of Agatha Christie.

Childhood

He was born on February 8, 1828 on the island of Fedo on the Loire River, near Nantes, in the house of his grandmother Sophie Allot de la Fuy on Rue de Clisson. Father was a lawyer Pierre Verne(1798-1871), descended from a family of Provins lawyers, and his mother - Sophie-Nanina-Henriette Allot de la Fuy(1801-1887) from a family of Nantes shipbuilders and shipowners with Scottish roots. On his mother's side, Verne was descended from a Scotsman N. Allotta, who came to France to serve King Louis XI in the Scots Guard, served and received the title in 1462. He built his castle with a dovecote (French fuye) near Loudun in Anjou and took the noble name Allotte de la Fuye (French Allotte de la Fuye).

Jules Verne became the first-born. After him, his brother Paul (1829) and three sisters were born - Anna (1836), Matilda (1839) and Marie (1842).

In 1834, 6-year-old Jules Verne was sent to a boarding school in Nantes. Teacher Madame Sambin often told her students how her husband, a sea captain, was shipwrecked 30 years ago and now, as she thought, he was surviving on some island, like Robinson Crusoe. The Robinsonade theme also left its mark on the work of Jules Verne and was reflected in a number of his works: “The Mysterious Island” (1874), “The Robinson School” (1882), “The Second Motherland” (1900).

In 1836, at the request of his religious father, Jules Verne went to the École Saint-Stanislas seminary, where he studied Latin, Greek, geography and singing. In his memoirs, “Fr. Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse" Jules Verne described his childhood delight at the Loire embankment and the passing merchant ships past the village of Chantenay, where his father bought a dacha. Pruden Allot's uncle circumnavigated the world and served as mayor of Bren (1828-1837). His image was included in some of the works of Jules Verne: “Robourg the Conqueror” (1886), “Testament of an Eccentric” (1900).

According to legend, 11-year-old Jules secretly got a job as a cabin boy on the three-masted ship Coralie in order to get coral beads for his cousin Caroline. The ship set sail that same day, stopping briefly at Pambeuf, where Pierre Verne intercepted his son in time and made him promise to henceforth travel only in his imagination. This legend, based on real story, was embellished by the writer’s first biographer, his niece Margarie Allot de la Fuy. Already a famous writer, Jules Verne admitted:

« I must have been born a sailor and now I regret every day that a maritime career did not fall to my lot from childhood».

In 1842, Jules Verne continued his studies at another seminary, Petit Séminaire de Saint-Donatien. At this time, he began writing the unfinished novel “A Priest in 1839” (French: Un prêtre en 1839), where he describes the poor conditions of the seminaries. After two years of studying rhetoric and philosophy with his brother at the Lycée Royale (modern French: Lycée Georges-Clemenceau) in Nantes, Jules Verne received his bachelor's degree from Rennes on July 29, 1846, with the mark “Pretty Good.”

Youth

By the age of 19, Jules Verne tried to write voluminous texts in the style of Victor Hugo (the plays “Alexander VI”, “The Gunpowder Plot”), but father Pierre Verne expected his first-born to do serious work as a lawyer. Jules Verne was sent to Paris to study law, away from Nantes and his cousin Caroline, with whom young Jules was in love. On April 27, 1847, the girl was married to 40-year-old Emile Desune.

Having passed his exams after his first year of study, Jules Verne returned to Nantes, where he fell in love with Rose Herminie Arnaud Grossetiere. He dedicated about 30 poems to her, including “The Daughter of the Air” (French La Fille de l "air). The girl’s parents chose to marry her not to a student with a vague future, but to the wealthy landowner Armand Therien Delaye. This news plunged young Jules into the sadness that he tried to “cure” with alcohol caused disgust for his native Nantes and local society. The theme of unhappy lovers, marriage against one’s will can be seen in several of the author’s works: “Master Zacharius” (1854), “The Floating City” (1871), “Mathias Sandor" (1885), etc.

Study in Paris

In Paris, Jules Verne settled with his Nantes friend Edouard Bonamy in a small apartment at 24 Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie. The aspiring composer Aristide Guignard lived nearby, with whom Verne remained friendly and even wrote chanson songs for him. musical works. Taking advantage of family ties, Jules Verne entered the literary salon.

The young people ended up in Paris during the revolution of 1848, when the Second Republic was led by its first president, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. In a letter to his family, Verne described the unrest in the city, but hastened to assure that the annual Bastille Day passed peacefully. In his letters, he mainly wrote about his expenses and complained of stomach pains, which he suffered for the rest of his life. Modern experts suspect the writer has colitis; he himself considered the disease to be inherited through the maternal line. In 1851, Jules Verne suffered the first of four facial palsies. Its cause is not psychosomatic, but is associated with inflammation of the middle ear. Luckily for Jules, he was not drafted into the army, about which he happily wrote to his father:

« You must know, dear father, what I think about military life and these servants in livery... You have to renounce all dignity to do such work».

In January 1851, Jules Verne completed his studies and received permission to practice law.

Literary debut

Cover of the magazine "Musée des familles" 1854-1855.

In a literary salon, the young author Jules Verne met Alexandre Dumas in 1849, with whose son he became very friendly. Together with his new literary friend, Verne completed his play “Broken Straws” (French: Les Pailles rompues), which, thanks to the petition of Alexandre Dumas the Father, was staged on June 12, 1850 at the Historical Theater.

In 1851, Verne met a fellow Nantes resident, Pierre-Michel-François Chevalier (known as Pitre-Chevalier), who was the editor-in-chief of the magazine Musée des familles. He was looking for an author who could write engagingly about geography, history, science and technology without losing the educational component. Verne, with his inherent passion for the sciences, especially geography, turned out to be a suitable candidate. The first work submitted for publication, “The First Ships of the Mexican Fleet,” was written under the influence of the adventure novels of Fenimore Cooper. Pitre-Chevalier published the story in July 1851, and in August released a new story, “Drama in the Air.” From then on, Jules Verne combined adventurous novels, adventures with historical excursions in his works.

Pitre-Chevalier

Thanks to his acquaintance through Dumas the son with the director of the theater, Jules Seveste, Verne received the position of secretary there. He was not bothered by the low pay; Verne hoped to stage a series of comedic operas, written together with Guignard and librettist Michel Carré. To celebrate his work at the theater, Verne organized a dinner club, "Eleven Bachelors" (French: Onze-sans-femme).

From time to time, Father Pierre Verne asked his son to leave the literary profession and open a legal practice, for which he received letters of refusal. In January 1852, Pierre Verne gave his son an ultimatum, transferring his practice in Nantes to him. Jules Verne refused the offer, writing:

« Don't I have the right to follow my own instincts? It's all because I know myself, I realized who I want to become one day».

Jules Verne conducted research in National Library France, composing the plots of his works, satisfying his thirst for knowledge. During this period of his life, he met the traveler Jacques Arago, who continued to travel despite his deteriorating eyesight (he became completely blind in 1837). The men became friends, and Arago's original and witty travel stories pushed Verne into the developing genre of literature - the travel essay. The magazine Musée des familles also published popular science articles, which are also attributed to Verne. In 1856, Verne quarreled with Pitre-Chevalier and refused to collaborate with the magazine (until 1863, when Pitre-Chevalier died and the post of editor went to someone else).

In 1854, another cholera outbreak claimed the life of theater director Jules Seveste. For several years after this, Jules Verne continued to engage in theater productions, write musical comedies, many of which were never staged.

Family

In May 1856, Verne went to the wedding of to the best friend to Amiens, where he attracted the attention of the bride’s sister, Honorine de Vian-Morel, a 26-year-old widow with two children. The name Honorina means “Sad” in Greek. In order to improve his financial situation and get the opportunity to marry Honorine, Jules Verne agreed to her brother’s proposal to engage in brokerage. Pierre Verne did not immediately approve of his son's choice. On January 10, 1857, the wedding took place. The newlyweds settled in Paris.

Jules Verne left his theater job, went into bond trading, and worked full time as a stockbroker on the Paris Stock Exchange. He woke up before dark to write until he left for work. IN free time he continued to go to the library, compiling his card index from different areas knowledge, and met with members of the “Eleven Bachelors” club, who by this time had all gotten married.

In July 1858, Verne and his friend Aristide Guignard took up the offer of Guignard's brother to go on a sea voyage from Bordeaux to Liverpool and Scotland. Verne's first trip outside of France made a huge impression on him. Based on his trip in the winter and spring of 1859-1860, he wrote “A Journey to England and Scotland (A Reverse Journey),” which was first published in 1989. The friends took a second sea voyage in 1861 to Stockholm. This journey formed the basis of the work “ Lottery ticket No. 9672." Verne left Guignard in Denmark and hurried to Paris, but did not make it in time for the birth of his only natural son, Michel (d. 1925).

The writer's son Michel was involved in cinematography and filmed several of his father's works:

• « Twenty thousand leagues under the sea"(1916);
• « The fate of Jean Morin"(1916);
• « Black India"(1917);
• « Southern Star"(1918);
• « Five hundred million begumas"(1919).

Michel had three children: Michel, Georges and Jean.

Grandson Jean-Jules Verne(1892-1980) - author of a monograph on the life and work of his grandfather, on which he worked for about 40 years (published in France in 1973, Russian translation carried out in 1978 by the Progress publishing house).

Great-grandson - Jean Verne(b. 1962) - famous opera tenor. It was he who found the manuscript of the novel " Paris in the 20th century”, which for many years was considered a family myth.

There is an assumption that Jules Verne had illegitimate daughter Marie from Estelle Hénin, whom he met in 1859. Estelle Henin lived in Asnieres-sur-Seine, and her husband Charles Duchesne worked as a notary clerk in Coevre-et-Valsery. In 1863-1865, Jules Verne came to Estelle in Asnieres. Estelle died in 1885 (or 1865) after the birth of her daughter.

Etzel

Cover of “Extraordinary Journeys”

In 1862, through a mutual friend, Verne met the famous publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel (who published Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo) and agreed to present him his fresh work“Travel in a Balloon” (French: Voyage en Ballon). Etzel liked Verne's style of combining harmoniously fiction with scientific detail, and he agreed to collaborate with the writer. Verne made adjustments and two weeks later presented a slightly modified novel with the new title “Five Weeks in a Balloon.” It appeared in print on January 31, 1863.

Pierre-Jules Hetzel

Wanting to create a separate magazine " Magasin d"Éducation et de Récréation"("Journal of Education and Entertainment"), Etzel signed an agreement with Verne, according to which the writer undertook to provide 3 volumes annually for a fixed fee. Vern was pleased with the prospect stable income while doing what you love. Most of his works appeared first in a magazine before being published in book form, a practice that began with the appearance of Etzel's second novel in 1864, The Voyage and Adventures of Captain Hatteras in 1866. Then Etzel announced that he plans to publish a series of works by Verne called “Extraordinary Journeys,” where the master of words should “ identify all the geographical, geological, physical and astronomical knowledge accumulated by modern science, and retell them in an entertaining and picturesque form" Verne acknowledged the ambitious nature of the idea:

« Yes! But the Earth is so big, and life is so short! To leave behind a completed work, you need to live at least 100 years!».

Especially in the first years of collaboration, Etzel influenced the work of Verne, who was glad to meet the publisher, with whose corrections he almost always agreed. Etzel did not approve of the work "Paris in the 20th Century", considering it a pessimistic reflection of the future, which was not suitable for a family magazine. Novel for a long time was considered lost and was published only in 1994 thanks to the great-grandson of the writer.

In 1869, a conflict broke out between Etzel and Verne over the plot of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Verne created the image of Nemo as a Polish scientist who took revenge on the Russian autocracy for the death of his family during the Polish uprising of 1863-1864. But Etzel did not want to lose the profitable Russian market and therefore demanded that the hero be made an abstract “fighter against slavery.” In search of a compromise, Vern shrouded Nemo's past in secrets. After this incident, the writer coldly listened to Etzel’s comments, but did not include them in the text.

Travel writer

Honorine and Jules Verne in 1894 for a walk with the dog Follet in the courtyard of an Amiens house Maison de la Tour.

In 1865, near the sea in the village of Le Crotoy, Verne purchased an old sailing boat "Saint-Michel", which he rebuilt into a yacht and a "floating office". Here Jules Verne spent a significant part of his creative life. He traveled extensively around the world, including on his yachts Saint-Michel I, Saint-Michel II and Saint-Michel III (the latter was a fairly large steam vessel). In 1859 he traveled to England and Scotland, and in 1861 he visited Scandinavia.

On March 16, 1867, Jules Verne and his brother Paul set off on the Great Eastern from Liverpool to New York (USA). The journey inspired the writer to create the work “The Floating City” (1870). They return on April 9 for the beginning of the World Exhibition in Paris.

Then a series of misfortunes befell the Vernes: in 1870, Honorine’s relatives (brother and his wife) died from a smallpox epidemic; on November 3, 1871, the writer’s father, Pierre Verne, died in Nantes; in April 1876, Honorine almost died of bleeding, who was saved with using a blood transfusion procedure that was rare in those days. Since the 1870s, Jules Verne, raised Catholic, turned to deism.

In 1872, at the request of Honorina, the Vernov family moved to Amiens “away from the noise and unbearable bustle.” Here the Verns actively participate in the life of the city, organizing evenings for neighbors and acquaintances. At one of them, guests were invited to come dressed as characters from Jules Verne’s books.

Here he subscribed to several scientific journals and became a member of the Amiens Academy of Sciences and Arts, where he was elected chairman in 1875 and 1881. Despite the persistent desire and help of Dumas the son, Verne failed to obtain membership in the French Academy, and he remained in Amiens for many years.

The only son of the writer Michel Verne caused a lot of problems for his relatives. He was distinguished by extreme disobedience and cynicism, which is why in 1876 he spent six months in a correctional facility in Metra. In February 1878, Michel boarded a ship to India as an apprentice navigator, but naval service did not improve his character. At the same time, Jules Verne wrote the novel The Fifteen-Year-Old Captain. Michel soon returned and continued his dissolute life. Jules Verne paid off his son's endless debts and eventually kicked him out of the house. Only with the help of his second daughter-in-law did the writer manage to establish a relationship with his son, who finally came to his senses.

In 1877, receiving large fees, Jules Verne was able to buy a large metal sailing-steam yacht “Saint-Michel III” (in a letter to Etzel the transaction amount was stated: 55,000 francs). The 28-meter vessel was based in Nantes with an experienced crew. In 1878, Jules Verne, together with his brother Paul, committed big Adventure on the yacht “Saint-Michel III” in the Mediterranean Sea, visiting Morocco, Tunisia, and the French colonies in North Africa. Honorina joined the second part of this journey through Greece and Italy. In 1879, on the yacht Saint-Michel III, Jules Verne again visited England and Scotland, and in 1881 - the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Then he planned to reach St. Petersburg, but a strong storm prevented this.

In 1884, Jules Verne made his last great journey. He was accompanied by his brother Paul Verne, son Michel, and friends Robert Godefroy and Louis-Jules Hetzel. “Saint-Michel III” moored in Lisbon, Gibraltar, Algeria (where Honorine was visiting relatives in Oran), got caught in a storm off the coast of Malta, but sailed safely to Sicily, from where the travelers went on to Syracuse, Naples and Pompeii. From Anzio they traveled by train to Rome, where on July 7 Jules Verne was invited to an audience with Pope Leo XIII. Two months after sailing, Saint-Michel III returned to France. In 1886, Jules Verne unexpectedly sold the yacht at half price, without explaining the reasons for his decision. It has been suggested that maintaining a yacht with a crew of 10 became too burdensome for the writer. Jules Verne never went to sea again.

last years of life

On March 9, 1886, Jules Verne was shot twice from a revolver by his mentally ill 26-year-old nephew Gaston Verne (son of Paul). The first bullet missed, but the second wounded the writer’s ankle, causing him to limp. I had to forget about traveling forever. The incident was hushed up, but Gaston spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital. A week after the incident, news of Etzel's death came.

On February 15, 1887, the writer's mother Sophie died, whose funeral Jules Verne was unable to attend due to health reasons. The writer finally lost his attachment to the places of his childhood. That same year, he was passing through his hometown to take over inheritance rights and sell Vacation home parents.

In 1888, Verne entered politics and was elected to the city government of Amiens, where he introduced several reforms and served for 15 years. The position involved supervising the activities of circuses, exhibitions, and performances. At the same time, he did not share the ideas of the Republicans who put forward him, but remained a convinced Orléanist monarchist. Through his efforts, a large circus was built in the city.

In 1892, the writer became a Knight of the Legion of Honor.

On August 27, 1897, brother and comrade Paul Verne died of a heart attack, which plunged the writer into deep sadness. Jules Verne refused to have surgery on his right eye, which was marked by cataracts, and subsequently became almost blind.

In 1902, Verne felt creative decline, responding to a request from the Amiens Academy that at his age " words go away, but ideas don't come" Since 1892, the writer has been gradually refining prepared plots without writing new ones. Responding to the request of Esperanto students, Jules Verne began a new novel in this artificial language in 1903, but completed only 6 chapters. The work, after additions by Michel Verne (the writer’s son), was published in 1919 under the title “The Extraordinary Adventures of the Barsac Expedition.”

The writer died on March 24, 1905 in his Amiens house at 44 Boulevard Longueville(today Boulevard Jules Verne), at the age of 78, from diabetes. More than five thousand people came to the funeral. German Emperor Wilhelm II expressed his condolences to the writer's family through the ambassador who attended the ceremony. Not a single delegate from the French government came.

Jules Verne was buried in the Madeleine cemetery in Amiens. A monument was erected on the grave with a laconic inscription: “ To immortality and eternal youth».

After his death, a card index remained, including over 20 thousand notebooks with information from all areas of human knowledge. 7 previously unpublished works and a collection of short stories came out of print. In 1907, the eighth novel, The Thompson & Co. Agency, written entirely by Michel Verne, was published under the name Jules Verne. There is still debate about whether the novel was written by Jules Verne.

Creation

Review

Watching the passing merchant ships, Jules Verne dreamed of adventure since childhood. This developed his imagination. As a boy, he heard from his teacher Madame Sambin a story about her captain husband, who was shipwrecked 30 years ago and now, she thought, was surviving on some island, like Robinson Crusoe. The Robinsonade theme was reflected in a number of Verne’s works: “The Mysterious Island” (1874), “The Robinson School” (1882), “The Second Homeland” (1900). Also, the image of Pruden Allot’s uncle-traveler was included in some of Jules Verne’s works: “Robourg the Conqueror” (1886), “Testament of an Eccentric” (1900).

While studying at the seminary, 14-year-old Jules vented his dissatisfaction with his studies in an early, unfinished story, “A Priest in 1839” (French: Un prêtre en 1839). In his memoirs, he admitted that he read the works of Victor Hugo, especially loved “The Cathedral Notre Dame of Paris"And by the age of 19 he tried to write equally voluminous texts (the plays "Alexander VI", "The Gunpowder Plot"). During these same years, the lover Jules Verne composed a number of poems, which he dedicated to Rose Erminie Arnaud Grossetiere. The theme of unhappy lovers and marriage against one’s will can be seen in several of the author’s works: “Master Zacharius” (1854), “The Floating City” (1871), “Mathias Sandor” (1885), etc., which was the result of an unsuccessful experience in the life of the writer himself.

In Paris, Jules Verne entered a literary salon, where he met Dumas the father and Dumas the son, thanks to whom his play “Broken Straws” was successfully staged on June 12, 1850 at the Historical Theater. For many years, Verne was involved in theater productions and wrote musical comedies, many of which were never staged.

A meeting with the editor of the magazine “Musée des familles” Pitre-Chevalier allowed Verne to reveal his talent not only as a writer, but also as an entertaining storyteller, capable of in clear language talk about geography, history, science and technology. The first work submitted for publication, “The First Ships of the Mexican Fleet,” was written under the influence of the adventure novels of Fenimore Cooper. Pitre-Chevalier published the story in July 1851, and in August released a new story, “Drama in the Air.” From then on, Jules Verne combined adventurous romance and adventure with historical excursions in his works.

In the works of Jules Verne, the struggle between good and evil is clearly visible. The author is categorical, drawing absolutely unambiguous images of heroes and villains in almost all his works. With rare exceptions (image Robura in the novel “Robur the Conqueror”) the reader is invited to sympathize and empathize with the main characters - examples of all virtues and to experience antipathy towards everyone negative heroes, who are described exclusively as scoundrels (bandits, pirates, robbers). As a rule, there are no halftones in the images.

In the writer’s novels, readers found not only an enthusiastic description of technology and travel, but also bright and lively images of noble heroes ( Captain Hatteras, Captain Grant, captain Nemo), cute eccentric scientists ( Professor Lidenbrock, Dr. Clawbonny, cousin Benedict, geographer Jacques Paganel, astronomer Palmyrene Roset).

The author's travels in the company of friends formed the basis for some of his novels. "A Journey to England and Scotland (A Retrospective Journey)" (first published in 1989) conveyed Verne's impressions of visiting Scotland in the spring and winter of 1859-1860; “Lottery Ticket No. 9672” refers to the 1861 voyage to Scandinavia; "The Floating City" (1870) recalls the transatlantic voyage with his brother Paul from Liverpool to New York (USA) on the Great Eastern in 1867. During a difficult period of difficult family relationships, Jules Verne wrote the novel “The Fifteen-Year-Old Captain” as an edification to his disobedient son Michel, who set off on his first voyage for the purpose of re-education.

Ability to grasp development trends, keen interest in scientific and technological progress gave some readers a reason to exaggerately call Jules Verne a “prognosticator”, which in reality he was not. The bold assumptions he made in his books are only a creative reworking of scientific ideas and theories that existed at the end of the 19th century.

« Whatever I write, whatever I invent, said Jules Verne, all this will always be below the actual capabilities of a person. The time will come when the achievements of science will surpass the power of imagination».

Verne spent his free time at the National Library of France, where he satisfied his thirst for knowledge and compiled a scientific card index for future subjects. In addition, he had acquaintances with scientists and travelers (for example, Jacques Arago) of his time, from whom he received valuable information from various fields of knowledge. For example, the prototype of the hero Michel Ardant (“From the Earth to the Moon”) was the writer’s friend, photographer and aeronaut Nadar, who introduced Verne to the circle of aeronauts (among them were the physicist Jacques Babinet and the inventor Gustave Ponton d’Amécourt).

Cycle “Extraordinary Journeys”

After a quarrel with Pitre-Chevalier, fate in 1862 gave Verne a new meeting with the famous publisher Pierre-Jules Etzel (who published Balzac, George Sand, Victor Hugo). In 1863, Jules Verne published in his " Magazine for education and recreation"The first novel from the series "Extraordinary Travels": "Five Weeks in a Balloon" (Russian translation - ed. by M. A. Golovachev, 1864, 306 pp.; entitled " Air travel through Africa. Compiled from the notes of Dr. Fergusson by Julius Verne"). The success of the novel inspired the writer. He decided to continue to work in this vein, accompanying the romantic adventures of his heroes with increasingly skillful descriptions of incredible, but nevertheless carefully thought out scientific “miracles” born of his imagination. The cycle continued with novels:

• "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1864),
• "The Voyage and Adventures of Captain Hatteras" (1865),
• "From the Earth to the Moon" (1865),
• "Captain Grant's Children" (1867),
• "Around the Moon" (1869),
• "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" (1870),
• "Around the World in 80 Days" (1872),
• "The Mysterious Island" (1874),
• "Michael Strogoff" (1876),
• "The Fifteen-Year-Old Captain" (1878),
• "Robourg the Conqueror" (1886)
• and many others.

Later creativity

Since 1892, the writer has been gradually refining prepared plots without writing new ones. At the end of his life, Verne’s optimism about the triumph of science gave way to fear about its use for harm: “Flag of the Motherland” (1896), “Lord of the World” (1904), “The Extraordinary Adventures of the Barsac Expedition” (1919; the novel was completed by the writer’s son Michel Verne). Faith in constant progress was replaced by an anxious expectation of the unknown. However, these books were never as huge a success as his previous works.

Responding to the request of Esperanto students, Jules Verne began a new novel in this artificial language in 1903, but completed only 6 chapters. The work, after additions by Michel Verne (the writer’s son), was published in 1919 under the title “The Extraordinary Adventures of the Barsac Expedition.”

After the death of the writer, a large number of unpublished manuscripts remained, which continue to be published to this day. For example, the 1863 novel “Paris in the 20th Century” was published only in 1994. Creative heritage Jules Verne includes: 66 novels (including unfinished ones and published only at the end of the 20th century); more than 20 novels and short stories; more than 30 plays; several documentary and scientific journalistic works.

Translations into other languages

Even during the author’s lifetime, his works were actively translated into different languages. Verne was often dissatisfied with the finished translations. For example, English-language publishers cut works by 20-40%, removing Verne's political criticism and extensive scientific descriptions. English translators considered his works intended for children and therefore simplified their content, while making a lot of mistakes, violating the integrity of the plot (even to the point of rewriting chapters and renaming characters). These translations were republished in this form for many years. Only since 1965 did competent translations of Jules Verne's works begin to appear. English language. However, older translations are easily accessible and replicable because they have reached public domain status.

In Russia

In the Russian Empire, almost all of Jules Verne's novels appeared immediately after the French editions and went through several reprints. Readers could see the works and critical reviews of them on the pages of leading magazines of the time (Nekrasov’s Sovremennik, Nature and People, Around the World, World of Adventures) and books published by M. O. Wolf, I. D. Sytin , P. P. Soikina and others. Verna was actively translated by translator Marco Vovchok.

In the 1860s, the Russian Empire banned the publication of Jules Verne’s novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” in which spiritual censors found anti-religious ideas, as well as the danger of destroying trust in the Holy Scriptures and the clergy.

Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev called Verne a “scientific genius”; Leo Tolstoy loved to read Verne's books to children and drew illustrations for them himself. In 1891, in a conversation with physicist A.V. Tsinger, Tolstoy said:

« Jules Verne's novels are excellent. I read them as an adult, but still, I remember they delighted me. He is an amazing master in constructing an intriguing, exciting plot. And you should listen to how enthusiastically Turgenev speaks about him! I just don’t remember him admiring anyone else as much as Jules Verne».

In 1906-1907, book publisher Pyotr Petrovich Soykin undertook the publication of the collected works of Jules Verne in 88 volumes, which, in addition to famous novels also included previously unfamiliar to the Russian reader, for example, “Native Banner”, “Castle in the Carpathians”, “Invasion of the Sea”, “Golden Volcano”. An album with illustrations appeared as an appendix French artists to the novels of Jules Verne. In 1917, the publishing house of Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin published the collected works of Jules Verne in six volumes, which published the little-known novels “The Damned Secret,” “Lord of the World,” and “The Golden Meteor.”

In the USSR, the popularity of Verne's books grew. On September 9, 1933, the resolution of the Central Committee of the Party “On the Publishing of Children's Literature” was issued: Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift and Jules Verne. "DETGIZ" began planned work to create new, high-quality translations and launched the "Library of Adventures and Science Fiction" series. In 1954-1957, a 12-volume volume of the most famous works of Jules Verne was published, followed in 1985 by an 8-volume volume in the Ogonyok Library series. Foreign classics."

Jules Verne was the fifth most published foreign writer (after H. C. Andersen, Jack London, the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault) in the USSR in 1918-1986: the total circulation of 514 publications amounted to 50,943 thousand copies.

In the post-perestroika period, small private publishing houses began to republish Jules Verne in pre-revolutionary translations with modern spelling, but with unadapted style. The Ladomir publishing house launched the series “The Unknown Jules Verne” in 29 volumes, which was published from 1992 to 2010.

IN modern Russia The writer's books are available in different formats and translations.

Russia in the novels of Jules Verne

Jules Verne did not have a chance to visit Russia, but the action of some of his novels takes place entirely or partially on the territory of this country:

• Mikhail Strogoff. Moscow - Irkutsk (1876),
• Stubborn Keraban (1883),
• Foundling with the Dead "Cynthia" (1885), co-authored with André Laurie;
• Robur the Conqueror (1886),
• Caesar Cascabel (1890),
• Claudius Bombarnac (1892),
• The Stories of Jean-Marie Cabidoulin (1901),
• Drama in Livonia (1904).

Russians also appear as main characters in the novels “The Adventures of Three Russians and Three Englishmen in South Africa"(1872) and "Hector Servadac. Travels and adventures in the circumsolar world" (1877). In Upside Down, Russian delegate Boris Karkov attends a meeting of Barbicane and Co. Russia in Verne’s works seems to be some kind of distant fairy-tale country that has little in common with the realities of that time.

Perpetuation of memory

Named after Jules Verne:

• asteroid 5231 Verne, discovered on May 9, 1988 by C. S. Shoemaker and Y. M. Shoemaker and G. Holt at Palomar Observatory and named on February 15, 1995;
• first automatic cargo truck spaceship, developed by ESA;
• crater on the Moon with a diameter of 146 km;
• The 16th release of the Fedora operating system, codenamed Verne;
• restaurant on the first level Eiffel Tower in Paris;
• street in Ust-Kamenogorsk (Kazakhstan);
• challenge prize Jules Verne Cup awarded since 1993 to the crew of a yacht for the fastest round-the-world, non-stop sailing;
• the French association "The Adventures of Jules Verne" is engaged in the protection environment and raising public awareness of the conservation of endangered species.

In numismatics and philately:

• The French Mint has repeatedly dedicated coin issues to the memory of the writer. In 2005-2006, 23 coins were minted in gold, silver and copper to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Verne's death. On June 25, 2012, as part of the numismatic series “Regions of France,” a silver coin with a face value of 10 euros was issued with the image of the writer and objects from his works. It represents the region of Picardy, where the writer lived until the end of his life;
• Featured on a Hungarian postal block from 1978;

Museums and monuments

Several Jules Verne museums are open. The main tourist places in the footsteps of the writer are his hometown Nantes and Amiens. From 1882 to 1900, the Verns lived in a four-story house Maison de la Tour with a tower on Rue Charles Dubois in Amiens. Here the science fiction writer wrote 34 novels. In 1890, the city municipality bought the building and opened the museum to the public in 1991, which was transformed in 2006 with the acquisition of documents, books, furniture and other items of the writer from Count Piero Gondolo della Riva, an Italian collector and admirer of Verne's work.

There are no museums dedicated to the writer in Russia. However, in 2013, in Irkutsk, where part of the events of the novel “Michael Strogoff” took place, an exhibition dedicated to the writer was held with personal items brought for the first time from Nantes (a globe, a preparation cabinet with measuring and drawing tools, Order of the Legion of Honour, first edition of the novel "Michael Strogoff" 1876).

In 2015 in Nizhny Novgorod The first monument to Jules Verne in Russia was erected by the Kazan sculptor Fanil Valiullin. The monument represents a life-size figure of the writer standing in the basket of a balloon. The grand opening took place on September 27, 2015 on the Fedorovsky embankment and was dedicated to Year of Literature in Russia, as well as on the 110th anniversary of the writer’s death.

Jules Verne Museum in Nantes

Jules Verne Museum in Nantes (reverse side)

House in Le Crotoy where Jules Verne lived between 1865 and 1870.

House with a tower (Maison de la Tour) in Amiens, where Jules Verne lived and worked

Music room in an Amiens house. Photo from 1894.

Jules Verne's room in an Amiens house in 1894.

Influence

The work of Jules Verne has had big influence into the literary and scientific worlds. Authors who were influenced by the works of the famous science fiction writer:

• I. A. Efremov
• Marcel Aimé,
• Roland Barthes,
• Rene Barjavel,
• Michel Butor,
• Blaise Cendrars,
• Paul Claudel,
• Jean Cocteau,
• Raymond Roussel,
• Francois Mauriac,
• Antoine de Saint-Exupery,
• Jean-Paul Sartre.

Ray Bradbury said that “we are all, one way or another, children of Jules Verne.”

Wolfgang Hohlbein wrote a continuation of the Nautilus story, creating a series of books called “The Children of Captain Nemo” (German: Kapitän Nemos Kinder).

Among the researchers inspired by Verne's ideas were:

• first cosmonaut Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin,
• founder of modern aeromechanics Nikolai Egorovich Zhukovsky,
• French speleologist Norbert Casteret,
• Brazilian aviator and airship builder Alberto Santos-Dumont,
• the creator of the gyroplane, Juan de la Cierva,
• inventor of the building apparatus Eduard Belin,
• Norwegian traveler Fridtjof Nansen,
• inventor of radio communication, Guglielmo Marconi,
• stratosphere explorer Auguste Picard,
• volcanologist Garun Taziev

Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky admitted: “ The desire for space travel was instilled in me by the famous dreamer Jules Verne. He awakened the brain in this direction" Vladimir Afanasyevich Obruchev echoed him: “ As an example, I can say that I became a traveler and explorer of Asia thanks to reading the novels of Jules Verne».

Jules Verne is the mastermind behind the steampunk genre, with its celebration of scientific progress and 19th-century invention.

Film adaptations

The first film adaptations of Jules Verne’s works were directed by his son Michel Verne: “ Twenty thousand leagues under the sea"(1916); " The fate of Jean Morin"(1916); " Black India"(1917); " Southern Star"(1918); " Five hundred million begumas"(1919).

In 1902, the first science fiction film in the history of cinema, “A Trip to the Moon” by Georges Méliès, was released, which is largely not an adaptation, but a parody of the plots of the novels by Jules Verne “From a Gun to the Moon” and H.G. Wells “The First Men on the Moon” .

In total, there are more than 200 film adaptations of the writer’s works.

Several films based on the works of Jules Verne were made in the USSR:

• Captain Grant's Children (1936)
• Mysterious Island (1941)
• The Fifteen-Year-Old Captain (1945)
• A scene from the novel From a Gun to the Moon is reproduced at the beginning of the film The Man from Planet Earth (1958).
• Broken Horseshoe (1973)
• Captain Nemo (1975)
• In Search of Captain Grant (1985, 7 episodes)
• Captain of the Pilgrim (1986)

Jules Verne (1828-1905),

French writer,

founder of science fiction.

Jules Verne was born in the French city of Nantes. He lived in Paris for several years, engaged in literary work.

With a deep interest in geographical exploration and aeronautics, Verne wrote a treatise on the possibility of exploring Africa by balloon. The treatise was rejected by many, but one of the publishers, P. Etzel, suggested Verne to remake it into an adventure novel. This is how the novel appeared "Five Weeks in a Balloon", which brought fame to the author. Soon the novel was translated into almost all European languages ​​and made the author popular throughout the world.

One day Jules Verne came to the reception room of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, where the secretary, very polite, said to him: “Please sit down, Monsieur Verne. After so much travel, you must be very tired...”

Fans of the writer’s talent really had no doubt that he was describing real travel, that his characters were actually flying. balloons and conquer the depths of the sea.

Verne himself influenced literature by approving science fiction on a solid basis, and on the rise of science, stimulating public interest in the development of aviation, speleology and the creation of submarines.

Verne believed that if the reader could guess how it would all end, then such a book would not be worth writing. So that nothing would distract him from his work, he moved from noisy Paris to the calm, quiet town of Amiens.

Jules-Gabriel Verne was born on February 8, 1828 in the family of a lawyer in Nantes. The romance of the port city undoubtedly left its mark on the attitude of young Jules. He was attracted by sailing ships and distant countries. At the age of 11, he even tried to fulfill his dreams by getting a job as a cabin boy on one of the ships leaving for India. But his father managed to bring him home. Future writer promised his parent that from now on he would travel only in his dreams.

Under pressure from his father, the young man studies law in order to later inherit the family business. But Jules Verne has a real interest in literature and theater, and even writes two plays for the local stage. Realizing that real theatrical life is in Paris, he persuades Verne Sr. to let him go to the capital. In 1849, having received his diploma, the young lawyer was in no hurry to get a job in his specialty, but enjoyed attending scientific debates, literary and political salons, where he met many progressive people of that time, doing odd jobs.

Among his friends was Alexandre Dumas, who later became the patron of the aspiring writer. Perhaps it was he who suggested Verne the idea of ​​“geographical” novels. The idea of ​​telling about the nature of the entire globe captured the writer, especially since his theatrical plays did not bring in any income. Jules Verne writes a historical and geographical story, “The First Ships of the Mexican Navy,” which was published in 1851.

In 1857, the writer married a widow named Honorine de Vian, who had two children. Four years later, their son Michel is born - the only child of J. Verne. The first years of marriage were happy. Over time, the relationship between the spouses changed for the worse: Honorina did not share her husband’s passion for travel.

A turning point in the life of J. Verne was his meeting with the famous Parisian publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who saw in him the talent of an “adventure” writer and entered into a contract with him. According to this document, the writer undertook to publish two novels a year for 20 years, which required hard work, but provided a decent living for his family.

To create his works, J. Verne follows the latest geographical and scientific discoveries: he studies newspaper files, collecting any information that could be useful in his work. In 1862, his first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was published. The public's interest in geographical travel in those years was enormous, and it is not surprising that books about the discoveries of new lands became widely known.

In subsequent years, he created the novels: “Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1864), “The Voyage of Captain Hatteras” (1865), “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865) and “Around the Moon” (1870). In these works, the writer touches on the four main interests of scientists of that period: the exploration of the pole, the secrets of the underworld, controlled aeronautics and interplanetary flights.

The beloved book “The Children of Captain Grant” (1868) was the first in a trilogy that also included “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” (1870) and “The Mysterious Island” (1875). The heroes of these stories not only travel, but also fight injustices such as the slave trade, racism and the colonial system. Verne was inspired to create Around the World in Eighty Days (1872) by a magazine article which stated that a man, with fast means of transport, was quite capable of circumnavigating the globe in 80 days. The novel was a great success, and readers were convinced that the character Phileas Fogg was a real person.

Jules Verne himself was passionate about traveling: in 1859 he went to England and Scotland on his yacht. In 1861 he visited Scandinavia. In 1867 he visited the United States by steamship. Twice he made a long trip to the Mediterranean Sea. In 1879 he again visited England and Scotland. In 1881, Jules Verne traveled to the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Only a strong storm prevented him from sailing to St. Petersburg. Subsequently, his travels became the basis for the works: “The Floating City” (1870), “Black India” (1877), “The Green Ray” (1882), “Lottery Ticket” (1886) and others.

In 1872, Jules Verne moved to the small provincial town of Amiens, where he lived for the rest of his life, working from morning to evening. There is no doubt that the collection of his books can be called a geographical encyclopedia, containing a description of the flora and fauna of all continents, his own vision of the underground world and even outer space. Thus, the writer achieved his goal set at the beginning of his work.

He predicted such inventions as scuba tanks, television, the electric chair, the airplane, the submarine and many others. The writer explained the fact that many of the scientific achievements and discoveries he described were coming true simply: having an extensive card index of all kinds of scientific information and analyzing the information, he was able to foresee this or that scientific event, which was the result of hard work. His works were a synthesis of science and fiction.

Jules Verne was one of the first writers to raise the issue of morality in scientific discoveries. The novels “Five Hundred Million Begumas” (1879) and “Lord of the World” (1904) describe a scientist who seeks to conquer the whole world with the help of his inventions. In the works “Eye to the Banner” (1896) and “The Extraordinary Adventures of the Varsak Expedition” (1919, completed by his son), another tragic story, when a scientist becomes the executor of the will of the villains. A similar problem arose acutely for humanity in the 20th century with the invention of hydrogen and neutron bombs.

On April 24, 1905, Jules Verne died in Amiens from diabetes, leaving behind a rich legacy: 66 novels, stories, fairy tales, plays, geographical essays and notes. He was a member of the French Geographical Society and winner of the Grand Prize of the French Academy. But his greatest reward was and is the love of readers of all ages. And the noble heroes of his books remain young and continue to take them on exciting journeys and unknown worlds.