More Translated Than Shakespeare
Since 1979, Jules Verne has been the second most translated author in the world. Only Agatha Christie beats him. William Shakespeare comes after him. In the 2010s he was the most translated French author on the planet.
Yet for a long time many English readers were not really reading Verne at all. Early English versions were rushed out to cash in on his fame. They were often abridged, full of errors, and sold mainly to children. One 1872 English version of Journey to the Center of the Earth gave the characters new names and added whole pages the translators made up.
The writer Adam Roberts put it simply. He had read most of the novels, he said, but only later realised he had not been reading Jules Verne. Better translations have appeared since 1965, but the old ones keep coming back because they are free to reprint.
The Law Student Who Said No
Verne was born in Nantes, France, in 1828, near a river full of ships. When he was six, his teacher told the class that her missing husband was a castaway who would come home one day, like Robinson Crusoe. Stories of castaways, called a robinsonade, would fill his books for life.
His father wanted him to become a lawyer and take over the family practice. Verne did finish his law degree in 1851. But when his father offered him the business in 1852, he turned it down. He wrote that because he knew who he was, he could see what he might become one day.
For years he worked as a stockbroker in Paris. He woke early each morning to write before work. A colleague said he was better at witty replies than at business.
Three Books a Year for One Publisher
In 1862 Verne took a manuscript about a balloon trip across Africa to the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Hetzel liked it and suggested changes. Verne made them in two weeks. Five Weeks in a Balloon came out in 1863.
Hetzel then offered a long contract. Verne would deliver three volumes a year, and Hetzel would buy each for a flat fee. Most of the novels were first serialized in Hetzel's magazine. Together they became the Voyages extraordinaires, which aimed to cover all the geography and science of the age.
Hetzel did not accept everything. He made Verne rewrite the ending of Captain Hatteras so the hero survived. He rejected Paris in the Twentieth Century as too gloomy. That book vanished until Verne's great-grandson found it in 1989. It was finally published in 1994.
Prophet or Just a Good Researcher?
People love to say Verne predicted the future. Scholars today say those claims are heavily exaggerated. One critic suggested readers remember things from his books that are not actually there.
Verne himself agreed. He said plainly that he had invented nothing. Any link between his stories and later inventions, he said, was pure coincidence. His secret was research. Even before writing stories, he took notes from every book, newspaper and scientific report he found, and kept them on notecards for the rest of his life.
His balloon book shows how he thought. He said he did not write it as a story about balloons at all. It was a story about Africa, and a balloon was just the only way to carry his travellers across it. He added that he did not believe balloons could ever be steered.
From His Pages to the Moon
Prophet or not, Verne inspired people who changed the world. Yuri Gagarin, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Wernher von Braun, Guglielmo Marconi and the explorer Fridtjof Nansen all named him as an inspiration. He is also credited with helping to inspire steampunk.
In 1969, on the way home from the Moon, the Apollo 11 crew talked about him on live TV. Neil Armstrong noted that a hundred years earlier, Verne had written about a Moon ship that took off from Florida and landed in the Pacific. Apollo 11 was about to do the same.
The story came full circle again in 2026. When Artemis II splashed down after flying around the Moon, NASA's commentator said the journey went from the pages of Jules Verne to a modern mission. As Ray Bradbury put it, we are all children of Jules Verne.
