Jules Verne: visionary, speculative, sci-fi, adventure, fantasy, early Dadaist, Proto-Kafkaesque, prophet …? A wealth of labels attach to his name wherever he goes. From the optimistic adventure tales of his early days, to the darker, more pessimistic tones of his later work, Verne covered a range of visual, inventive narratives that both entertained the general public and opened up ideas and concepts to thinkers and inventors. His works have regularly been adapted for film and television - perhaps most popular is his Around the World in Eighty Days, which was first filmed in 1919 as a silent film, featuring Conrad Veidt (Casablanca, 1942), followed by Michael Todd’s 1956 blockbuster which graced the screens with a starry cast and magnificent technicolour. It has been adapted at least five more times in various formats, with another due to be released this year.
Verne started life in Nantes, and was shunted off to various schools with a view to training in law; however, young Verne showed decided literary tendencies early on - writing his first novel while still in his teens. His holidays were spent with his ship owner uncle Prudent Allotte, who had travelled the world, and it seems likely that this instilled Verne with his love of travel and exploration, which translated into his works.
While studying law to please his father, Verne continued to write, and worked as secretary of the Théâtre Lyrique, where he wrote and produced comic operas. He quickly made his way in Paris society owing to family connections, and attended many literary salons. He could count Dumas père & fils among his friends, along with Victor Hugo - in a sense, the four literary Musketeers, with Verne the fresh faced d’Artagnan, mentored and encouraged by his brothers in literature.
He dreamed up a new kind of fiction - science adventure, and his first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, serialised in Le Magasin d’éducation et de récréation, was an overnight success. It was the first of his Voyages extraordinaires, which he would continue to write for the rest of his career, and his publisher, Hetzel, signed him up long-term, enabling Verne to throw up his job as broker and focus fully on writing. Such familiar classics as 80 Days Around the World, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and many more followed, in a prolific stream during the years regarded as his ‘optimistic’ period. Save for one: the ‘lost novel’, which Hetzel refused to publish, finding it too gloomy, and even too fantastical.
“No-one today will believe your prophecy.”
Paris au XXe siècle, written in 1863, predicted life in the 20th century, with eerie prescience: street lighting, synthetic food, horseless cars, skyscrapers, elevators and a technological take-over where a dystopian society abandons the arts in favour of mass mechanisation and profit. As one of the characters comments: ‘This world is nothing more than a market.’ Hetzel worried that the book’s generally pessimistic outlook and tragic hero would ruin Verne’s career, and advised him to stick to lively, cheerful prose, which he knew would sell - and it did.
It was a book ahead of its time - but only slightly. A mere twenty years later and readers’ appetites were roaring for futuristic literature - both cheerful and otherwise. H G Wells stepped in, followed by Huxley and Orwell and many, many others.
Meanwhile, Paris au XXe siècle remained unpublished - a ‘lost novel’, locked away inside a safe in the Verne household until 1989 when it was released into the wild by the author’s great grandson Jean Jules-Verne. Published by Hachette in 1994, followed by an English version from Random House in 1996.
The Father of us All
"...we are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne."
Ray Bradbury, Introduction, Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Self, William Butcher, 1990.
Would Jules Verne agree that he was a writer of science fiction? He denied that he had invented anything, and referred instead to his research, which was painstaking, and his love of history, geography and travel.
From an interview he gave to Marie A. Belloc (Strand Magazine, February, 1895):
“Your love of geography did not prevent your possessing a strong bent for science?”
“Well, I do not in any way pose as a scientist, but I esteem myself fortunate as having been born in an age of remarkable discoveries, and perhaps still more wonderful inventions.”
“You are doubtless aware,” interposed Mme. Verne, proudly, “that many apparently impossible scientific phenomena in my husband's romances have come true?”
“Tut, tut,” cried M. Verne, deprecatingly, “that is a mere coincidence, and is doubtless owing to the fact that even when inventing scientific phenomena I always try and make everything seem as true and simple as possible. As to the accuracy of my descriptions, I owe that in a great measure to the fact that, even before I began writing stories, I always took numerous notes out of every book, newspaper, magazine, or scientific report that I came across. …’
One of the inventions mentioned in Paris in the 20th century is a form of proto-computer. The typewriter only became commercially available in 1874.
It’s true that different versions were designed from as far back as the 16th century. Between 1802 and 1808 two early typewriters were made (Fantoni and Turri). These were isolated inventions, however, not commercially available and in fact,not much is known about them.
So all those visits to the Bibliothèque Nationale must have paid off - unless Verne was time-travelling…?
The full interview with Jules Verne and Mrs Verne is charming and down-to-earth, and can be read here:
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