Jules Verne is one of the most celebrated French writers worldwide ; his series of Voyages Extraordinaires feature such famous characters as Phileas Fogg and Captain Nemo, adventurers exploring the centre of the earth or the depths of the seven seas. He is now slowly recognised for his literary skills, the same skills that were refused upon him during his lifetime, his endless quest. In fact he is the father of the Verne disease, this lack of recognition of an anticipation or science fiction writer for his literary skills, even when his books are huge best sellers. Let's talk about the man first. All that comes later in his life is rooted in him as a person. He was a physically weak person, and in his early twenties started to suffer from severe intestine problems, accompanied with a partial paralisis of the left side of his face. Earlier on, as a child, he had been strongly attracted to travelling. The sight of the ships in the harbour of Nantes was a window to far-off lands, the taste of adventure in fact. Later on he travelled to the UK and Scotland, as well as Scandinavia and the United States, where his books had brought him immense sales and celebrity.

But his parents and family were much more homely people and could not really understand the longing of their son for foreign and dangerous lands. And the fact that his health problems started when he went to Paris for his Law studies brings me to the idea that some of it may have been psychosomatical, a reaction to the opposition of his parents. He studied Law, because his parents wanted him to. He was not interested in his studies, but later worked on the stock exchange, where he proved a poor adviser. His main job during his early life was as an administrator in a theatre. In fact his main hope then was to get one or two of his plays on the stage, which he thought would bring him fame in writing. It happened once or twice (his put pressure on his boss and threatened to leave his job), but never with a success. What a difference with what happened later when his books were adapted for the theatre! The range of his failures also included his private life. He fell in love with his cousin Caroline and a young Herminie, but eventually married Honorine, a young widow with two daughters. He was a relatively good husband, except from an infidelity and his gross table manners at swallowing the fine cooking of Honorine. Then came Michel, the son of all disasters. Michel, whose behaviour was to inspire Un Capitaine de 15 ans, was taking advantage of his father's wealth and name, never actually studied or worked while he was young, spending his time and his father's money in seducing dancers and actresses. Later on, though, his son put aside his young and wild behaviour to eventually pay his father back. After Jules Verne's death, Michel corrected, finished and published a few of his father's unpublished drafts, and became a Jules Verne in the shadows for a few years.

The hoax was nearly discovered, but it is now acknowledged that "Le Volcan d'Or", "La Chasse au Météore", "L'Agence Thomson", "Le pilote du Danube", and "L'étonnante aventure de la Mission Barsac" are a collaboration between the son and his dead father. Michel Verne prefered to use his father's name because he needed money to maintain his lifestyle and also because he knew his father's name could sell more than his own.

Jules Verne tried (and he did try very hard!) to get some plays produced on the stage. He wrote plays, but those that made their way on the stage were soon forgotten, as had been forgotten those that he had read to his family years before. He was to leave his print as the writer of a new style of geographical discovery and anticipation. It is only late in his life that these books were adapted on stage, under the shape of what we would now call "Musicals", thus making up for his young life's frustrations.
Jules Verne's disappointing love life and youth disappointments brought him to write books in which love and feelings had all but a small part to play. Only in Le Tour du Monde en 80 jours does a significant female character appear. Princess Anoua is the almost unique woman in Jules' work, but he explained this in an interview "I think my characters may be distracted by the presence of a lady around them. And keep also in mind that I am writing for young readers and do not want them to read from me anything that their parents would not find suitable". The real reasons were too private for him to describe.

Jules Verne wrote the first book of Voyages Extraordinaires, Cinq semaines en ballon, almost by chance. Jacques Arago had written a book named "Voyage autour du monde". He had the idea that under the austerous geographical description of the world, adventure was crouching, about to jump. Adventure of the Western traveller facing new cultures, new people, new landscapes and cities.
And at that time, a lot of the known world was still far from the organised 1850-1900 European way of life.
In 1851, the Musée des Familles was a series of traveller's accounts to children, and specially created to provide young readers with innocent and almost educational reading. Under the shape of short stories, small geography lectures on foreign lands. If there was (and there was!) any inaccuracy, it was drowned in a carefully documented description of the land, that included geographical landmarks and their metered height and map coordinates, engravings of the places and the cities. After this, if the description of the people was not so true, readers could not really tell the true from the false. Main caracters were Western characters, interacting with the locals, according to descriptions made by real travellers. More often than not, they included strong stereotypes that existed if only to comfort the views of the readers.
It is the perfect balance between geographical, scientific description wherever it is relevant, adventure and discovery that is the key to Jules Verne's success, and also paradoxically his limitation as a writer, the prison of his audience's taste (that fortunately for him did not change a lot during his lifetime).

Later on, the Voyages Extraordinaires were supported in evidence and scientific data by Jules' cousin, Henri Garcet.
One of these stories in the Musée des Familles included a trip in a air balloon. After this, Jules Verne started 5 Semaines en Ballon. When published (after careful censorship by Mr Pierre-Jules Hetzel, his life-long editor), the original "Voyage en l'air" became the huge best-seller "5 Semaines en Ballon" that was to launch Jules' career as a writer.
Pierre-Jules Hetzel enjoyed inserting in Jules Verne's books small moral comments that were contributing to the moral educational value of the books. Paradoxically, Jules Verne was not particularly inclined to them, but when at the end of his life he was interviewed by the Pope Leon XIII, the Chief of the Catholic Church insisted on this point and on his contribution to Christian values...

At the end of his life, Jules Verne was acknowledged by Amiens and occupied political charges at local level. He was indoubtably considered a brilliant choice for a city that wanted to be focused on its future rather than its past.
 

After Cinq Semaines en Ballon and the following books, he became a successful writer "of entertainment for the kids". This is the worst compliment he ever heard, and he heard it all his life. He fought continuously to be acknowledged for his qualities as a writer of literature. It never happened during his lifetime. Even when the Académie Française welcomed him, they failed to welcome him for being a real writer. It was a bitter wound for a man who had wanted all his life to be known as a writer and who had made a living while not being considered one.
Le Tour du Monde en 80 Jours was inspired by an article in "Le Magasin Pittoresque" published in April 1870, that calculated that modern travel facilities could in theory get you round the globe in 80 days. It is then that Jules Verne noticed that running East, the lucky traveller would also gain a day travelling against the sun, and the basic idea of the book was born.
This book includes the heart-warming morale of a man running the globe to save the woman of his life, and was successfully adapted on stages in Paris and Broadway.
 

George Sand made a suggestion to him that was worth millions and millions. A few experiments at military level involved rudimentary submarines. George Sand suggested that he brought his heroes under the blue expenses of the seas. 20000 Leagues under the Seas was born. It can be considered his masterpiece due to the unusual depth of one of the characters : Captain Nemo. Whereas in the rest of Jules Verne's work his characters are actors on the stage of the landscape, Captain Nemo is indoubtably more than this. The Nautilus is the vehicle of of the adventure, but his master and creator is a very mysterious man. Jules Verne initially wanted to clarify the reasons why Captain Nemo was leading his weird and withdrawn lifestyle. He wished to make him a Polish lord in rebellion against the Russians, or a believer in the cause of the anti-esclavagists of the American Civil war. Mr Hetzel, keeping in mind the economic interests of these countries where Jules Verne's books were published, pushed Jules Verne to give to Nemo an anonymous yet ferocious fight, to make him a rebel, the archetype of rebels. Nemo loves the sea and hates the civilisation that dwells above the level of the water. Claiming that the world above the sea level is full of slavery and that below the waves freedom is king, Captain Nemo pulled away from the human world. Hetzel made Nemo immortal, with a poetry of insurrection beyond his time.