the extraordinary voyages of jules verne

Voyages Extraordinaires Books In Order

Publication order of voyages extraordinaires books.

Seen as one of the leading pioneers of science-fiction as a genre, the highly acclaimed French author Jules Verne is largely responsible for many of the innovations within the field, leading to it becoming the hugely inspired area of creativity that it currently is to this very day, as his legacy continues to live on, inspiring countless other writers in his wake. Telling stories that have become timeless, he’s managed to create worlds that really come alive off the page, building their own language and personality, as he would set the template for many years to come. With many other writers following in his wake, he’s a highly respected voice that really manages to evoke a strong response through his work and through his material. This can be seen through the rich and elaborate worlds that he builds that, whilst seemingly far removed from the reality on the surface, still retain a set of very real human attributes deep underneath, resonating with readers worldwide, on an almost universal level. Creating strong characters as well, many of his protagonists have also stood the test of time too, speaking about issues that are very real and very present within humanity. Taking ideas and concepts that are far reaching too, he always manages to say something that resonates with his audience, whilst also putting forward opinion of his own too. Not only that, but he all his stories have a sense of personality too, as he always articulated his own ideas and outlook, all whilst commenting upon the world around him as he would perceive it. This would lead to some of the most well thought out and highly compelling novels to date, leading to him becoming a literary figure that would be revered for many years to come. Over the course of his writing career, he would also come to establish a number of series too, many of which would also come to be highly regarded during his time too. A series that he would become particularly well known for would be that of his ‘Voyages Extraordinaires’, or ‘Extraordinary Voyages’, series of novels, as they would come to be regarded as some of his most influential works. Spanning a total of fifty-four novels, these would take up a large portion of the late writer’s career, seeing it become one of his most prolific series to date. Setting out a long-term goal of charting and imparting the entirety of modern scientific knowledge at the time in a fun, entertaining and picturesque set of stories, it would come to give birth to much of science-fiction as it is currently known today, making it one of his most influential series yet. Really taking the time to tell each and every story, this series of fifty-four novels would last between the years of 1863 to 1905, detailing some of the most influential stories of contemporary science-fiction.

Starting out with ‘Captain Hatteras’, it would also come to mark the third title in all of his novels released up until that point. Using both fictional and non-fictional stories, it would seek to tell them all in an engaging and compelling manner, many of the stories going on to achieve a sense of fame far beyond the series itself.

Five Weeks in a Balloon

Initially published in 1863, this would quickly go on to become a classic, as it would pave the way for many of Verne’s ideas to follow in the future. One of them most notably would be ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’ which would come out almost ten years later in 1972, showing a clear development of the original premise. Using a hot air balloon to navigate the entire world, it would come to be an extremely engaging adventure stories of contemporary literature, with it being adapted into various formats over the years.

Taking place in 1862, this story would commence on the 14th of January, from the Royal Geographical Society, No. 3 Waterloo Place, London. Setting off for the continent of Africa, Dr. Samuel Fergusson, the explorer and scholar, aims to navigate this difficult region in its entirety. Taking off in a hot-air balloon with his manservant Joe, the two of them aim to explore and plot the many various regions all across the continent. Can they manage it? Will they be able to locate the source of the Nile? What will they find during their five full weeks in a balloon?

The Adventures of Captain Hatteras

Originally published in 1866, this would come to mark the first titled ‘Voyages Extraordinaires’ novel, as the series would see itself become an established franchise. In the years to come it would also become a highly lauded adventure novel, showing Verne as a writer clearly within his element. First published in French, it has since been translated, thus allowing it to be appreciated on a worldwide global scale for many years to follow.Getting a mysterious letter with the order to construct a reinforced steamship, First Mate Shandon is intrigued after receiving this order in Liverpool. Soon, though, he discovers that the order is for none other than the brave Captain John Hatteras, as he has an obsession with getting to the very center of North Pole. Pushing onwards for Melville Bay and the Arctic labyrinth, he soon finds himself with a limited crew, as he continues to push forwards despite the risks. Will he manage it? Can he overcome the difficulties and dangers? What will become of Captain Hatteras?

The Voyages Extraordinaires Series

As a long-running series, this is perhaps one of Jules Verne’s most beloved collections to date, as it would come to make up the majority of his career, thus setting him up as one of the greatest and most influential writers of science-fiction to date. Over time this has gone on to shape the genre, allowing it to become what it currently is today, leading to this series being an important hallmark within the field. Definitely a must for any reader or fan of the genre, this is one series that will continue to stand the test of time for many years to come.

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Reading Books in Order

The Voyages extraordinaires: Jules Verne’s Amazing Journeys around the world

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Let’s explore the world with Voyages Extraordinaires , a classic adventures series written by French writer Jules Verne,

Reading The Extraordinary Voyages by Jules Verne

As a French, I can’t speak of the translation of Verne’s books into English. The famous writer is part of the public domain, so his works are easily available in French, and you can also find many older translations of his novels on Project Gutenberg . Some of his later works have been translated into English quite late – and are not part of the public domain for the moment.

In all cases, if possible, it seems that people recommend checking out more modern translations. I let you decide!

The Best of Voyages Extraordinaires

Les « Voyages Extraordinaires » officially consists of 62 novels and 18 short stories. As most stories (with a few exceptions – see below!) are stand-alones, you can pick one that interests you and read it! To help you, here’s a selection of the most famous and best of Jules Verne’s series (in no particular order):

– Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days, 1873) – Voyage au centre de la Terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1864) – Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, 1869–70) – De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon, 1865) – Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant (In Search of the Castaways, 1867–68) – L’Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island, 1874–75) – Michel Strogoff (Michael Strogoff, 1876) – Le Château des Carpathes (The Carpathian Castle, 1892) – Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1863)

Les Voyages Extraordinaires, The Complete Reading List

Following is a list of the fifty-four books published during Jules Verne’s lifetime, along with the most frequent English-language title for each. With a few exceptions, most of the novels in the Voyages series were initially serialized in periodicals, most notably Magasin d’Éducation et de Récreation . The dates mentioned are the dates of the first publication in book format.

Most of Verne’s books are standalone, with the following exceptions:

• Around The Moon (1870) continues the story told in From the Earth to the Moon (1865). It’s a direct sequel, starting exactly where the first novel finishes. 
• The Mysterious Island (1875) can be read as a standalone but also works as a very loose sequel to In Search of the Castaways (1868) and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870). A few characters from those books appear in The Mysterious Island . You will not lose anything to read them independently.
• Master of the World (1904) is a sequel to Robur the Conqueror (1886).
• An Antarctic Mystery (1897) is a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe’s novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838).
• The Castaways of the Flag (1900) is a sequel to Johann Wyss’ novel The Swiss Family Robinson (1812).

• Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon, 1863)
• Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras (The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, 1864-66)
• Voyage au centre de la Terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1864)
• De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon, 1865)
• Les Enfants du capitaine Grant (In Search of the Castaways, aka Captain Grant’s Children, 1867-68)
• Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, 1869-70)
• Autour de la lune (Around The Moon, 1870)
• Une ville flottante (A Floating City, 1871)
• Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais (The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa, aka Measuring a Meridian, 1872)
• Le Pays des fourrures (The Fur Country, aka Seventy Degrees North Latitude, 1873)
• Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days, 1873)
• L’Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island, 1874-75)
• Le Chancellor (The Survivors of the Chancellor, 1875)
• Michel Strogoff (Michael Strogoff: The Courier of the Czar, 1876)
• Hector Servadac (Off on a Comet, 1877)
• Les Indes noires (The Child of the Cavern, aka The Underground City, 1877)
• Un capitaine de quinze ans (Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen, 1878)
• Les Cinq Cents Millions de la Bégum (The Begum’s Millions, 1879)
• Les Tribulations d’un chinois en Chine (Tribulations of a Chinaman in China, 1879)
• La Maison à vapeur (The Steam House, 1880)
• La Jangada (Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon, 1881)
• L’École des Robinsons (Godfrey Morgan, aka School for Crusoes, 1882)
• Le Rayon vert (The Green Ray, 1882)
• Kéraban-le-têtu (Kéraban the Inflexible, 1883)
• L’Étoile du sud (The Vanished Diamond, aka The Southern Star, 1884)
• L’Archipel en feu (The Archipelago on Fire, 1884)
• Mathias Sandorf (Mathias Sandorf, 1885)
• Un billet de loterie (The Lottery Ticket, aka Ticket No. 9672, 1886)
• Robur-le-Conquérant (Robur the Conqueror, aka The Clipper of the Clouds, 1886)
• Nord contre Sud (North Against South, aka Texar’s Revenge, 1887)
• Le Chemin de France (The Flight to France, 1887)
• Deux Ans de vacances (Two Years’ Vacation, 1888)
• Famille-sans-nom (Family Without a Name, 1889)
• Sans dessus dessous (The Purchase of the North Pole, aka Topsy-Turvy, 1889)
• César Cascabel (César Cascabel, 1890)
• Mistress Branican (Mistress Branican, 1891)
• Le Château des Carpathes (The Carpathian Castle, 1892)
• Claudius Bombarnac (Claudius Bombarnac, aka The Adventures of a Special Correspondent, 1892)
• P’tit-Bonhomme (Foundling Mick, 1893)
• Mirifiques Aventures de Maître Antifer (Captain Antifer, 1894)
• L’Île à hélice (Propeller Island, aka The Floating Island, 1895)
• Face au drapeau (Facing the Flag, 1896)
• Clovis Dardentor (Clovis Dardentor, 1896)
• Le Sphinx des glaces (An Antarctic Mystery, aka The Sphinx of the Ice Realm, 1897)
• Le Superbe Orénoque (The Mighty Orinoco, 1898)
• Le Testament d’un excentrique (The Will of an Eccentric, 1899)
• Seconde Patrie (The Castaways of the Flag, aka Second Fatherland, 1900)
• Le Village aérien (The Village in the Treetops, 1901)
• Les Histoires de Jean-Marie Cabidoulin (The Sea Serpent, 1901)
• Les Frères Kip (The Kip Brothers, 1902)
• Bourses de voyage (Travel Scholarships, 1903)
• Un drame en Livonie (A Drama in Livonia, 1904)
• Maître du monde (Master of the World, 1904)
• L’Invasion de la mer (Invasion of the Sea, 1905)

The next eight novels were published posthumously as part of the Voyages Extraordinaires . Originally written by Verne, some have been revised and expanded by his son Michel Verne (uncredited). No manuscript has been found for The Thompson Travel Agency , leading to believe that this novel might be exclusively Michel’s work.

• Le Phare du bout du monde (The Lighthouse at the End of the World, 1905)
• Le Volcan d’or (The Golden Volcano, 1906)
• L’Agence Thompson and Co (The Thompson Travel Agency, 1907)
• La Chasse au météore (The Chase of the Golden Meteor, 1908)
• Le Pilote du Danube (The Danube Pilot, 1908)
• Les Naufragés du “Jonathan” (The Survivors of the “Jonathan”, 1909)
• Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz (The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz, 1910)
• L’Étonnante Aventure de la mission Barsac (The Barsac Mission, 1919)

Our Voyage is not over yet, as the two following short story collections are also considered part of Verne’s series:

• Le Docteur Ox (Doctor Ox, 1874)
• Hier et Demain (Yesterday and Tomorrow, 1910) (posthumous, with stories completed or modified by Michel Verne)

As we talking about shorter works, following is the list of short stories released alongside one of the series’ novels:

– Les Forceurs de blocus (The Blockade Runners, published with A Floating City, 1871) – Martin Paz (Martin Paz, published with The Survivors of the Chancellor, 1875) – Un drame au Mexique (A Drama in Mexico, published with Michael Strogoff, 1876) – Les révoltés de la Bounty (The Mutineers of the Bounty, published with The Begum’s Millions, 1879) – Dix heures en chasse (Ten Hours Hunting , published with The Green Ray, 1882) – Frritt-Flacc (Frritt-Flacc, published with The Lottery Ticket, 1886) – Gil Braltar (Gil Braltar, published with The Flight to France, 1887)

More About Les Voyages Extraordinaires

Jules verne’s influence and legacy.

Sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury once observed, “ We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne. ” Jules Verne, who is regarded as a “father of science-fiction” with H.G. Wells , is the second most translated author in history, behind only Agatha Christie and coming before William Shakespeare.

Pioneering submarine designer Simon Lake wrote in his biography that “Jules Verne was in a sense the director-general of my life” and aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont cited Verne as his favorite writer.

Polar explorer Richard E. Byrd, the astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission, the pioneers of rocketry Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Robert Goddard, and Hermann Oberth, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, the world-renowned speleologist Édouard-Alfred Martel, and the French general Hubert Lyautey all drew inspiration from Jules Verne’s works in some way.

Verne had also a significant literary impact on a number of authors, including Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Blaise Cendrars, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel Aymé, René Barjavel, Georges Perec and Jean Cocteau. Arthur C. Clarke wrote that “ Jules Verne had already been dead for a dozen years when I was born. Yet I feel strongly connected to him, and his works of science fiction had a major influence on my own career. He is among the top five people I wish I could have met in person. “

Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson), has also said having a long-standing fascination with Captain Nemo, and with the sea in general, thanks to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and The Mysterious Island .

We can add many more names to the list as his influence on literary and scientific works is unmeasurable, and the man is also cited as a major influence on the steampunk genre .

Jules Verne’s Stories on Screen

Jules Verne was publishing one or two books annually, and even after he died in 1905, his work was still released regularly until his last original book in 1919. Even then, his stories were already considered classics and filmmakers didn’t wait to seize his work and produce adaptations.

Adaptations of Verne’s tales have been made as early movie shorts, serials, feature films, miniseries, and television shows, his stories retold through the years giving life to iconic characters such as Phileas Fogg and Captain Nemo.

Though not a direct adaptation of Verne, A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune, 1902) directed by French filmmaker Georges Méliès is considered one of the earliest science fiction films in cinema history and the first Verne’s adaptation as the film is inspired in part by From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon .

Around the World in 80 Days is one of his most adapted novels, starting in 1913 in Germany with a movie directed by Carl Werner followed by another adaptation in 1919 from Richard Oswald (both having disappeared). The most recognized adaptation of this novel was released in 1956. Directed by Michael Anderson and produced by Mike Todd, the movie starred David Niven as Phileas Fogg who attempts to circumnavigate the globe in 80 days, Cantinflas as Passepartout, and Shirley MacLaine as Princess Aouda. They spared no expense to give life to this adventure, delivering a big spectacle that is now considered a classic.

Among other favorite adaptations of Verne’s books, we also have the 1954’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea featuring Kirk Douglas, James Mason, and Peter Lorre who was the third highest-grossing film of this year and is today considered an early precursor of the steampunk genre.

A few years later, James Mason finds himself in another Verne adaptation, this time playing Sir Oliver Lindenbrook in Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) where he goes to explore the depths of the Earth and finds commercial success. Though maybe less famous than the two previous movies cited, it is still established as the most successful adaptation of this book.

The end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties were certainly The Height of Verne’s adaptations, with Master Of The World (1961), Mysterious Island (1961), and In Search Of The Castaways (1962) among the noticeable adaptations.

Verne’s filmmaking continued in the next decades, with shifts in tones, animation, new aesthetics, and even pastiches, though few movies made an impact. Verne quite found its place on television with new adaptations in telefilms and miniseries in the nineties. When his works became public domain, it led to a resurgence of new adaptations and new visions representing the time period, including movies like Around The World In 80 Days (2004) and Journey To The Center Of The Earth (2008).

Jules Verne’s stories continue to inspire and be adapted in many forms for the screen.

SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, XXV:2 (July 1998): 241-70.

Arthur b. evans, the illustrators of jules verne’s voyages extraordinaires.

First, consider the following amazing statistic: there were over four thousand illustrations in Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires —an average of 60+ illustrations per novel, one for every 6-8 pages of text in the original in-octavo red and gold Hetzel editions. Since the publication of Verne’s first novel in 1863, these Victorian-looking woodcut plates and maps have constituted an integral part of Verne’s early science-fiction tales: to such an extent, in fact, that today most modern French reprints of the Voyages Extraordinaires continue to feature their original illustrations—recapturing the “feel” of Verne’s socio-historical milieu and evoking that sense of faraway exoticism and futuristic awe which the original readers once experienced from these texts. And yet, to date, the bulk of Vernian criticism has virtually ignored the crucial role played by these illustrations in Verne’s oeuvre.

As I have discussed in somewhat more detail elsewhere, 1 there appear to be four different categories of illustrations in the Voyages Extraordinaires , each of which has a different semiotic and/or didactic function within the narrative. The first offers renderings of the protagonists of the story—e.g., portraits like the one of Impey Barbicane in De la terre à la lune [ From the Earth to the Moon ] (#1). The second features the places visited by the protagonists and are normally more panoramic and postcard-like—e.g., the many exotic locales, unusual sights, and flora and fauna which the heroes encounter during their journey, like the one from Vingt mille lieues sous les mers [ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ] depicting divers walking on the ocean floor (#2).

The third is documentational in nature—e.g., the map of the Polar regions (hand-drawn by Verne himself) for his 1864 novel Les Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras [ The Adventures of Captain Hatteras ], where the curious reader might trace the itinerary of Hatteras and his crew as they explore the Arctic (#3). And the fourth portrays a specific moment of action in the narrative—e.g., the one from Voyage au centre de la terre [ Journey to the Center of the Earth ] where Prof. Lidenbrock, Axel, and Hans are suddenly caught in a lightning storm on a subterranean ocean (#4).

It is also interesting to note which passages in the text are ultimately chosen for representation in Verne’s novels. Most often, this decision seems to have been made less according to their respective importance to the story-line and more according to their intrinsic pedagogical value and/or their potential for enhancing the story’s local color, verisimilitude, or metaphoric content. For example, such crucial turning-points in the narrative like the explosion of the giant elephant locomotive in La Maison à vapeur [ The Steam House ] or the near-collision with a comet in Autour de la lune [ Around the Moon ] are not represented in these novels, whereas dozens of relatively unimportant scenes are —e.g., an illustration of Indian snake-charmers from the first (#5) or, from the second, one which depicts the frustration of Michel Ardan attempting to understand the complex algebraic computations of his fellow astronauts (#6).

The textual location of these illustrations in Verne’s novels is also noteworthy. Although differing from edition to edition (on facing pages in the original volumes), many tend to precede their textual counterparts by at least a page or two, arousing curiosity in the reader (i.e., inciting him or her to continue reading) and foreshadowing events and scenes to come. Consider, for instance, the one from L’Ile mystérieuse [ Mysterious Island ] where the castaways first encounter the land-locked Nautilus inside a seacave on Lincoln Island (#7). This illustration has been placed on page 795. By contrast, the page number in parentheses indicates that this scene is actually described on

page 798 of the narrative. Another use of illustrations to enhance foreshadowing in Verne’s works are the often very elaborate frontispieces opposite the title pages of these books—e.g., the one at the beginning of the Hetzel double-volume edition containing Cinq semaines en ballon [ Five Weeks in a Balloon ] and Voyage au centre de la terre (#8). Here the reader gets a foretaste of two representative episodes (one from each novel), superimposed upon one another in a kind of collage depicting scenes from above, on, and below the Earth’s surface. This frontispiece (and others) might be viewed as a highly symbolic pictorial representation of Verne’s goal—as expressed by his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel—to “outline all the geographical, geological, physical and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science.” 2

Moreover, the importance of these illustrations as visual aids to the explicit didactic intent of Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires cannot be overemphasized. The large number of purely pedagogical illustrations in Verne’s novels—those having very little to do with the fictional events narrated in the plot—is sometimes astonishing: species of fish enumerated by Conseil in Vingt mille lieues sous les mers , the phases of the moon in De la terre à la lune , the planet Saturn and its moons in Hector Servadac [ Off on a Comet ], various types of hot air balloons and dirigibles in Robur-le-conquérant [ Robur the Conqueror, Clipper of the Clouds ], etc. And even the non-pedagogical illustrations—those depicting the fictional plot—were also highly educational to French readers of the mid-late 19th century, especially to those who were less than 100% literate. As Marc Soriano has pointed out:

Let us not forget that [when Verne began to publish] we are in 1862-1865. The drive for literacy in France has been underway since the Guizot Law of 1833, but there is still much to do. Any well-advised editor must aid his readers who have not yet achieved a good reading proficiency.... 3

But it also must be acknowledged that the presence of such illustrations in Verne’s works acted as a double-edged sword: while they enhanced both the mimetic and the didactic dimensions of his novels, they also contributed to his entire oeuvre being considered “paraliterary” by the moguls of French literary taste of the time who viewed them as appropriate only for children or for the less-educated masses. 4

According to their correspondence, Verne, Hetzel, and the illustrators of these books collaborated very closely with one another, and there was constant communication among them throughout the entire production process. In an 1868 letter from Verne to Hetzel concerning Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (#9), for instance, Verne writes:

I have received the drawings from Riou. I have several suggestions to make which I’ll mention to him by return mail. I think he needs to make the people much smaller and the rooms much larger. And he needs to add much more detail... By the way, it was an excellent idea to use Colonel Charras as the model for Captain Nemo [#10]. I should’ve thought of that. 5

The following excerpt is from an 1879 letter written by Verne to the artist Léon Benett. At the time, they were preparing the illustrations for Verne’s novel called La Maison à vapeur —that narrative where the heroes travel across India in an elephant-locomotive pulling two train-cars (#11). Verne writes:

Dear Mr. Benett, I have received your drawings which look excellent. But the caravan needs to be modified: instead of 2 train-like cars, they should be small bungalows—like little pagodas on wheels, European on the inside but Hindu on the outside. Imagine something that would go with the elephant pulling them... Be careful to make them so that they are not square, but longer than wider... And try to make them look very ornate... 6

Verne often accompanied such letters to his illustrators with free-hand sketches to give them an idea of what he wanted. But, in this as in all other editorial matters, it was Hetzel who always had the final say. In the following 1884

letter, for example, Hetzel was forced to intervene in an apparent dispute between Verne and Benett over the portrayal of two protagonists in Verne’s novel Mathias Sandorf :

My dear old Benet [sic], I believe that we have finally come to the end of our miseries with these last changes that Verne has asked for. But if you look closer at his text concerning the clothing of Sarcany and Zirone, you will see that he is right. It couldn’t be clearer. He does indeed talk of a long cape and boots . You missed that entirely....Try to see if you can satisfy Verne’s demands...If he is annoying you, be assured that we are annoying him as well by forcing him to make revisions in his text. Nobody is exempt from corrections. 7

Hetzel often required major changes in his illustrators’ work before publication and sometimes also chose to radically censure their content in the name of “good taste.” For example, a peaceful and rather banal harbor scene at the outset of Les Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras was originally planned (and actually published in an earlier version of the novel) to depict

Hatteras’ boisterous shipmates offering toasts of rum to celebrate the beginning of their journey toward the North Pole (#12). On occasion, however, certain editorial oversights occurred which neither Verne, nor Hetzel, nor even the illustrator himself managed to catch before publication—e.g., the one from L’Ile mystérieuse of the orangutang named “Jup” (#13) who, unlike most members of his species, has grown a tail! Or look closely at the two illustrations, placed sequentially in this same novel, where Ayrton is secretly climbing aboard a pirate ship in the middle of the night (#14-15). Ayrton not only has found a pair of pants during his climb, but also the hull and bow of the vessel have mysteriously metamorphosed from iron to wood, and a winged figurehead has suddenly appeared on its prow! And, on least one occasion, the artist actually “corrected” Verne’s text when illustrating it—e.g., Alphonse de Neuville’s portrayal of the famous battle with the giant squid in Vingt mille lieues sous les mers showing the beast with the requisite ten tentacles, instead of eight as described by Verne in his narrative (#16). 8

The semiotic relationship between the illustrations and the text in Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires is also interesting. As Georges Borgeaud has described it: “It is not the text which defines the illustration, but the illustration which defines the text and which transports the reader beyond...it is a catalyst to dream.” 9 Each illustration not only condenses and concretizes into one image many separate segments of the text (presented linearly), but it also adds another layer of rich meaning to them, deepening the narrative’s associative and intertextual effect on the reader. In his study of Verne’s illustrations, for example, Daniel Compère has observed:

This commentary via illustration establishes a dialectic between the real and the imagined. The illustrations strengthen the verisimilitude of the Vernian text and their realism acts as a kind of guarantor of veracity. But they also add a dimension...of illusion. 10

Further, the point of view represented by these illustrations—similar to the narrative voice in Verne’s texts 11 —is one which is constantly shifting, much like in a dream. The reader/viewer oscillates between seeing what the protagonists are actually seeing or thinking about, and what the narrator wishes to present as extra-narrative context. The point of view is sometimes anchored in the narrative’s present, sometimes in its past, sometimes in a hypothetical future. Much like a movie or TV camera, it sometimes zooms in for a close-up, sometimes zooms out for a panoramic shot, and sometimes (almost like an advertisement) intercalates into the action a brief pedagogical aside. In its polyvalent omnipresence—both within and outside the narrative itself—the point of view represented by these illustrations appears to dovetail perfectly with the dominant ideological and epistemological orientation of Verne’s entire oeuvre: i.e., a “vision” of totality, inventory, and appropriation. 12

But who were these illustrators? Who were these very talented artists whose evocative images brought Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires to life and allowed millions of 19th-century readers to “boldly go” where they had not gone before? Who were these individuals who played such a large role in Verne’s worldwide celebrity and the enduring popularity of this new literary genre?

It must be said from the outset that very little is known about them. 13 And even less is known about the dozens of engravers who converted the artists’ sketches into the detailed wood engravings and metal printing plates which produced the many illustrations published in these books, and whose names—Pannemaker, Hildibrand, Barbant, Prunaire, Dumont, Coste, Lavallé, Meaulle, et al.—sometimes figure prominently on the finished illustrations along with that of the illustrator himself. Consider, for example, the one from Cinq semaines en ballon (#17) illustrated by Riou and engraved by Hildebrand whose signature is found in the lower right-hand corner; or the one from Voyage au centre de la terre (#18) also illustrated by Riou but engraved by Pannemaker, who usually signed his work “PANN” (sometimes with the “N”s written backwards, as in a mirror reflection).

Edouard Riou (1833-1900) is the first and undoubtedly the most recognized

illustrator of Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires . He illustrated Verne’s earliest and most famous novels, including Cinq semaines en ballon, Voyage au centre de la terre, (#19), Les Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras, Les Enfants du capitaine Grant [ The Children of Captain Grant, In Search of the Castaways ], as well as the first eleven chapters of Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (the remaining chapters were done by Alphonse de Neuville). For this latter novel, Verne himself posed for the portrait of Prof. Pierre Aronnax located in an early chapter of this text. Before and after his association with Hetzel, Riou specialized for many years in landscape painting and commemorative pieces (the opening of the Suez Canal, the marriage of the Russian tsar’s daughter, etc.). A student of the famous French artists Daubigny and Gustave Doré, he was very well known in France during the 1850s, 60s, and 70s, and he contributed illustrations to a wide variety of French books and popular magazines throughout this period—e.g., Dumas’ Le Comte de Monte-Cristo , Scott’s Ivanhoe and Waverley , Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris and periodicals like Tour du monde , Illustrated Times , and La Chronique illustrée . He was even inducted into the prestigious Légion d’honneur toward the end of his career. Riou’s work for Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires has been described as follows: “Riou’s drawings are rich with light, and the traits of his characters have a vigorous expression (#20). Riou succeeds in adapting himself artistically to the realistic reproduction of the many fantastic locales of the Vernian fictional geography: the mists and the glacial icepacks (#21), the shadows inside the Earth’s crust (#22), the deserted and expansive beaches, and the many bodies of water and their movement...(#23). Everything is both ordered and evocative in Riou’s work—his style might be called ‘romantic realism’...” (#24). 14 Artist and Verne scholar Ron Miller has said of Riou: “I believe his work stylistically spans the transition between the illustrators of the early 19th century and those of the latter half—when the profession of professional illustrators became established. Some of the qualities that Riou carried over were the often cartoon-like depiction of characters and the use of numerous ‘spot’ illustrations.” 15

Henri de Montaut (1840?-1905?) helped Riou to illustrate Verne’s first two novels of Cinq semaines en ballon and Les Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras . But he is better known as the sole illustrator of Verne’s 1865 best-seller De la terre à la lune (#25-26) and the creator of some of the most celebrated early sf illustrations. Montaut was a successful magazine cartoonist who also specialized in portraits—as in his rendering of the three Vernian astronauts Barbicane, Nicholls, and Michel Ardan (#27)—the latter of whom, incidentally, was drawn from the likeness of the famous Parisian photographer and daredevil Nadar, whose witty personality and name (via anagram) were immortalized by Verne in this work. Montaut was also known to have contributed many works to the popular weekly French magazine La Vie Parisienne

founded in 1862 and was himself responsible for starting another illustrated journal called L’Art et la Mode .

Alphonse de Neuville (1835-1885) was another much-admired painter in France during this period. As a youth, he was a student of Eugène Delacroix, and he was especially known for his battle scenes and pictures of military life (especially scenes from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71). His paintings can be found in museums in Versailles, Grenoble, Moscow, New York, and other cities. He also contributed a large number of illustrations to the popular French magazine Le Tour du Monde , provided 309 plates for Guizot’s Histoire de France , and was inducted into the Légion d’honneur in 1881. He collaborated with Riou on Vingt mille lieues sous les mers —all of the illustrations from chapter 12 onwards are his (#28-31). Neuville was also responsible for a small number of illustrations in the best-selling 1873 novel Le Tour du monde en 80

jours [ Around the World in 80 Days ]—in particular, the portraits at the beginning of the novel like the one of Phileas Fogg (#32). But, before completing this work, he quit Hetzel’s employ, and it was the artist Léon Benett who provided the remainder of the illustrations for this particular novel.

Emile-Antoine Bayard (1837-1891) was a popular portrait painter and a regular contributor to many different periodicals like the Journal des Voyages , the Journal pour Rire , Cassell’s Magazine , Le Tour du monde , L’Illustration , and others. He illustrated many of Erckmann-Chatrian’s fantasy tales, a number of literary works for youth by Alphonse Daudet, Jules Sandeau, Hector Malot, la Comtesse de Ségur, and several classic novels like Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables . But he is probably best remembered as the illustrator of Un Drame dans les airs [ A Drama in the Air ] in Verne’s short-story collection Le Docteur Ox [ Doctor Ox ] 16 and especially for the 1872 sequel to Verne’s novel De la terre à la lune called Autour de la lune . His work has

been described as follows: “His engravings showing the effects of weightlessness upon the pioneer astronauts; the survey of the moon’s surface; and, above all, the ‘spashdown’ picture are among science fiction’s most famous illustrations (#33). The latter piece, showing the American flag securely fixed above the module, proved to be amazingly prophetic when Frank Borman of the Apollo 9 moon expedition landed in the Pacific, one hundred years later, only two or three miles from the point mentioned in the book.” 17

Jules Ferat (1819-1889?) was known in Paris especially for his portrayals of factory life, workers and their machines, and the milieu of heavy industry (#34). He was responsible for the illustrations in many books of fiction and non-fiction by authors like Eugène Sue, Louis Figuier, Mayne-Reid, Edgar Allan Poe, and Victor Hugo from the early 1850s to the late 1880s. He was also the sole illustrator for a number of Verne’s novels—e.g., Une Ville flottante [ A Floating City ], Les Forceurs du blocus [ Blockade Runners ], Les Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais [ The Adventures of 3 Englishmen and 3 Russians, Measuring the Meridian ] , Michel Strogoff, and Les Indes noires [ The Black Indies ]. He was also the co-illustrator with Alfred Quesnay de Beaurépaire (1830-?) for Le Pays des fourrures [ The Fur Country ] and illustrated two short stories, “Martin Paz” and “Un Drame au méxique” [A Drama in Mexico]. But Ferat’s real masterpiece was the series of illustrations he did for Verne’s 1874 novel L’Ile mystérieuse . Edmondo Marcucci 18 has said of his work: “Ferat’s illustrations are somewhat stylized: his characters have very fluid garments, rich with folds and movement, and usually possess rugged working-class faces”—e.g., the portrait of Gideon Spilett from L’Ile mystérieuse (#35). “Ferat is also a master with clair-obscur ; he is particularly good at rendering the play of light in darkened areas”—e.g., the various illustrations depicting the coal mines of Les Indes noires (#36). “On the other hand, he sometimes has a Michelangelo-like tendency toward over-musculature and exaggeration of proportion in his characters”—e.g., the double-portrait of

Aryton and Cyrus Smith in L’Ile mystérieuse (#37). “And Ferat often seems to prefer a more symbolic than realistic portrayal of reality”—e.g., his illustration of the ocean liner called “The Great Eastern” (#38) from Verne’s early novel Une Ville flottante , where Ferat has enlarged the size of this vessel to truly gargantuan proportions. Another critic has said of Ferat: “Jules Ferat has always been my favorite of Verne’s illustrators—I associate his images with the books in much the same way that I associate Tenniel with Carroll. I would love to have seen what he would have done with 20,000 Leagues or Journey to the Center of the Earth ! Benett runs a very close second, though his later work is not very good.” 19

Three artists were commissioned by Hetzel to illustrate one novel each in Verne’s collection: Henri Meyer (1844-1899) for Un Capitaine de quinze ans [ The Boy Captain ], Paul-Dominique Philippoteaux (?-1903) for Hector

Servadac , and Georges Tiret-Bognet (1855-1930?) for Famille-sans-nom [ Family Without a Name ]. Philippoteaux, the son of another famous French artist, was also responsible—along with Benett—for illustrating Verne’s geography-history books Découverte de la Terre [ Discovery of the Earth , 1868] and Les Grands Navigateurs du XVIIe siècle [ The Great Navigators of the 17th century , 1879].

Léon Benett (1839-1917) was by far the most important illustrator of Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires in terms of sheer volume—almost half of the 60+ novels in this series, nearly 2,000 illustrations. A good friend of both Verne and Hetzel, his real name was Benet (with one “t”), but he added another “t” so that his name would not resemble the French word for a fool, or a simpleton. In addition to his work for Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires , Benett also illustrated books by Hugo, Erkmann Chatrian, Tolstoy, André Laurie, and Camille Flammarion among others. Benett traveled widely in the Orient and the South Seas (#39-40), and Charles Lemire, 20 his fellow-traveler, described Benett and his work as follows: “We traveled together and wandered around the interior of the islands: rain forests, valleys, mountains, waterfalls, villages, plantations, tribespeople... (#41). Benett knew how to capture the real essence of all these exotic tropical locales. His notes and journal drawings were like an inexhaustible museum of our travels... And the exactitude of his illustrations were a perfect complement to the descriptions.” Benett’s work has also been described by Marcucci in the following terms: 21 “He is carefully realistic in his representations”—e.g., his illustration from Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum [ The Begum’s Fortune ] (#42) featuring a gigantic canon and its inventor, German mad scientist Herr Schultze (the German Chancellor Bismarck was used as model).

“Benett has a supple imagination, much movement, and there is a certain delicacy in his lines (#43), and this is especially evident in his portraits of women and children (#44). Finally, Benett knows better than most how to frame an outdoor scene so that it is both real and picturesque (#45), vibrating with richness.” But another critic, Pierre Sichel, 22 strongly disagrees, pointing out that “Alas, ihe reproduces with exactitude the narrated events, his portrayals go no further than that. He is not expressive. The faces of his characters are neutral; his locales are devoid of poetry... His compositions are impersonal (in the blandest and narrowest sense of the word)... Thanks to the collaboration of Alphonse de Neuville, Verne’s Le Tour du monde en 80 jours is a bit better. This latter illustrator contributed, for example, the excellent portrait of Phileas Fogg and a rather fine one of Passepartout. In contrast,

Benett’s rendering of the principal scenes in the novel is uniformly banal and boring... This is the work which made Jules Verne world-famous. Yet this novel is still awaiting an illustrator truly worthy of it” (#46). It is also interesting to note that Benett’s illustration of the American steam-train in Le Tour du monde en 80 jours (published in 1873) was apparently recycled thirteen years later, reappearing in the 1886 novel Robur-le-conquérant with the fantastic helicopter air-ship Albatros now inserted into it (#47).

Finally, George Roux (1850?-1929) was the second most prolific illustrator of the Voyages Extraordinaires —responsible for illustrating 22 novels in the series, mostly during the last years of Verne’s literary production (#48). He began with L’Epave du Cynthia [ The Salvage of the “Cynthia” ] in 1885 and finished with Verne’s last posthumous novel L’Etonnante aventure de la

mission Barsac [ The Barsac Mission ] in 1919. Scholarly opinion as to Roux’s merit as an illustrator tends to vary widely. One Vernian biographer, Peter Costello, has said of his illustrations for L’Etonnante aventure de la mission Barsac : “The vision of the secret city and the illustrations of it are quite magnificent. In designing the city, Roux seems to have been directly inspired by the latest advances in architecture... Verne was well served by his designers to the very end.” 23 In contrast, Ron Miller has characterized Roux’s work as follows: “In my opinion, Georges Roux was the weakest of Verne’s illustrators and demonstrates not only the gradually decreasing quality of Hetzel’s illustrators but the reproduction of Roux’s work additionally suffers from the decreasing quality of the woodcut engravers—a profession that disappeared almost overnight with the introduction of the halftone process. If you look at the illustrations in Verne’s later works in chronological order, you can see this deterioration dramatically displayed.” 24 And yet another, Pierre Sichel, remarks: “Roux is perhaps the most refined and the most ‘modern’ of all the illustrators of the Voyages Extraordinaires (#49). His compositions are large, luminous and very plastic”—e.g., the illustration from the Les Histoires de Jean-Marie Cabidoulin [ The Sea Serpent: the Yarns of Jean-Marie Cabidoulin ] (#50) where, obviously, Roux seems to have been just as clueless as De Neuville concerning shark anatomy.

“The gestures, faces, and muscles of his characters—and particularly in groups of people—are masterfully treated”—e.g., the illustration from the same work showing several bare-breasted New Zealand women feeding a reclining man (#51). This particular novel was published in 1901 (some 15 years after Verne’s publisher Hetzel had died), and it is almost certain that, had he been alive, the prudent Hetzel would have never allowed an illustration like this one to be published in Verne’s works. In his final comments on Georges Roux, Sichel makes the following observation: “Lastly, I find Roux’s chromotypographs

This mention of Roux’s “chromotypographs” leads me to one last but very important matter concerning the many original illustrations in Verne’s works: i.e., their technological evolution. From 1850 onwards, the rapid development of two-toned lithography, photography, and photolithography slowly began to replace the older woodcut-engraving process in most publishing houses in France—primarily because these techniques were cheaper, faster, and much less labor-intensive. 26 As a kind of graphic representation of this technological evolution in the printing industry, one need only look at the illustrations in Verne’s later Voyages Extraordinaires . For instance, consider those novels like his 1892 work entitled Claudius Bombarnac (illustrated by Léon Benett), whose title-page proudly announced the inclusion of six “large chromotypographical plates” along with “2 maps in color.”

Throughout this fin-de-siècle period of 1890 to 1900, Verne’s later novels tended to carry a mixture of old-fashioned woodcuts and the newer halftone illustrations. An example of this is George Roux’s illustrations for Verne’s 1897 epilogue to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Mystery of Arthur Gordon Pym called Le Sphinx des glaces [ The Ice Sphinx ]. Two illustrations, the first (a halftone) and the second (a woodcut), are located within the first couple of chapters of this work (#53-54). By Verne’s 1904 novel Maître du monde [ Master of the World ], however, most of the illustrations were of the new variety. And, effectively blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, even a real photograph is included from time to time—e.g., the one of Lake Michigan (#55) in this same novel.

Finally by 1907, some two years after Verne’s death, virtually all of his remaining posthumous novels feature only “modern” illustrations—e.g., the ones in his short story “Au XXXIXeme siècle: Journée d’un journaliste américain en 2889” [“In the Year 2889”] (#56)—actually written (as were a large number of other posthumous works) by Verne’s son Michel 27 and published

in the 1910 short-story collection entitled Hier et demain [ Yesterday and Tomorrow ]. 28

In conclusion, I believe that it is not too exaggerated to say that the novels of Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires constitute a key socio-historical artifact in understanding the dawn of our modern age—not only because of their much-discussed literary status as proto-sf, but also because of their evocative illustrations. The shift from a 19th-century worldview to an early 20th one is evident both in the stylized content of these pictures—the manner of dress, the facial hair, the Victorian “dream machines,” the Saint-Simonian portrayal of scientists as conquering heroes, etc.—and in their actual published format, as the technology itself was evolving from woodcuts to halftone

photolithography, etc. As such, this remarkable collection of early sf illustrations 29 stands as a living testament to the passing of an age—literary, ideological, and technological.

• See Arthur B. Evans, Jules Verne Rediscovered (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988) 117-18. See also the excellent study by Daniel Compère titled “Fenêtres latérales” in Jules Verne 4: texte, image, spectacle , ed. François Raymond (Paris: Minard, 1983) 55-71 as well as his “Poétique de la carte,” Bulletin de la Société Jules Verne 50 (1979): 69-74. All quotations translated from the French are my own. I would also like to offer my thanks to Jean-Michel Margot for his generous bibliographical help and to Sidney Kravitz for his assistance with the illustrations from L’Ile mystérieuse .
• Pierre-Jules Hetzel, “Avertissement de l’Editeur,” Les Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras (Paris: Hetzel, 1866) 7-8. Steve Michaluk, co-author with Brian Taves of The Jules Verne Encyclopedia (Scarecrow Press, 1996) offered an additional insight in an e-mail message to me (Sept. 24, 1997), saying: “I would like to suggest one other related aspect. As a variation on an old adage, in the case of Jules Verne ‘you CAN judge a book by its cover.’ In much the same way you describe Hetzel’s very symbolic ‘mise-en-abyme’ frontispiece, the same might be said of many Hetzel front cover designs. Likewise, British and American publishers of Jules Verne in the nineteenth century frequently used the original black & white illustrations from the Hetzels to adorn the front cover and spine. As you discuss the primary rationale of selecting which scenes were illustrated, the British and American publishers faced a secondary decision of which illustration to select for the front cover. If Verne’s reputation wasn’t enough to sell a book, perhaps an enticing front cover would be enough to catch a reader’s interest? Who knows, but I consider these bindings to be true works of art, and another legacy of Jules Verne.”
• Marc Soriano, Jules Verne (Paris: Julliard, 1978) 130-31.
• V. my article “Jules Verne and the French Literary Canon” in Jules Verne: Narratives of Modernity (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, forthcoming in 1998).
• Quoted in Charles-Noël Martin, La Vie et l’oeuvre de Jules Verne (Paris: Michel de l’Ormeraie, 1978) 176.
• Olivier Dumas, “Jules Verne et Benett, avec cinq lettres inédites de Jules Verne.” In Jules Verne 4: texte, image, spectacle , ed. François Raymond (Paris: Minard, 1983) 184-85.
• Philippe Chauchoy, Léon Benett, illustrateur de Jules Verne (Amiens: Centre Culturel de la Somme, 1991) 10-11.
• V. Walter James Miller and Frederick Paul Walter, “Verne’s Controversial Giant Squid: Continued,” Extraordinary Voyages: The Newsletter of the North American Jules Verne Society 4:1 (Dec. 1997): 1-5.
• Georges Borgeaud, “Les Illustrateurs de Jules Verne,” Arts et Lettres 15 (1949): 72. See also his article “Jules Verne et ses illustrateurs,” L’Arc 29 (1966): 43-45.
• Daniel Compère, “Fenêtres latérales.” In Jules Verne 4: texte, image, spectacle , ed. François Raymond (Paris: Minard, 1983) 70.

The narrative process is constantly breaking up. It changes signs, inverts itself, distances itself, comes from somewhere else as if from another speaker. Narrative voices emerge from nowhere, silencing those that preceded them, offering for a moment their own discourse, then suddenly disappear, to be replaced by another one of those nameless faces, these grey silhouettes. It is an organization very different from that of A Thousand and One page 263 Nights . In the latter, each narrative, even if it is recounted by a third party, is linked to the one who actually lived the story—each fable has its own voice, each voice its own fable... In Verne’s works, there is one fable per novel, but recounted by many different voices— voices that are intertwined, obscure, and contesting one another. (“Arrière fable” L’Arc 29 [1966]: 6).

• V. my article “The Extraordinary Libraries of Jules Verne,” L’Esprit créateur 28:1 (1988): 75-86.
• The two best sources for detailed information on Verne’s original illustrators are André Bottin, Bibliographie des éditions illustrées des Voyages Extraordinaires de Jules Verne (Contes: Chez l’auteur, 1978) and Edmondo Marcucci, Les Illustrations des Voyages Extraordinaires de Jules Verne (Bordeaux: Ed. Société Jules Verne, 1956). For information on subsequent illustrators (in reprints of Verne’s works), see Françoise Tamaro, “Textes et illustrations dans les romans de Jules Verne, de 1863 à nos jours” (mémoire de D.E.A. de littérature comparée), Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne, 1993. For an interesting discussion of the captions beneath Verne’s illustrations, see René Micha, “Les Légendes sous les images,” L’Arc 29 (1966): 50-55. In addition to the critical studies listed above and elsewhere in these notes, other useful works concerning Verne’s illustrators include Marcus Osterwalder, Dictionnaire des illustrateurs, 1800-1914 (Paris: Hubschmid & Bouret, n.d.), Robert Weinberg, A Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988), Jean Chesneaux, “Les Illustrations des romans de Jules Verne,” Bulletin de la Société Jules Verne 37-38 (1976): 114-15, and Cornelius Helling, “Les Illustrateurs des Voyages Extraordinaires ,” Bulletin de la Société Jules Verne 11-13 (1938): 140-46. Several studies on the topic which I have not seen include the following: Pierre Pitrou, “Les Illustrations des romans de Jules Verne” (mémoire—L’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 1977), Jacques Van Herp, Les Univers extraordinaires des illustrations de Jules Verne (Racour, Belgium: Ed. Phénix, 1992), Lucien Giraudo, “L’Illustration: une autre façon de voir et de lire Jules Verne,” Nouvelle Revue Pédagogique (Paris: Nathan, 1991), Hans Rie, “Der Triumph des Holzstiches. Die Originalillustrationen des Romanwerks Jules Verne,” Jules Verne Handbuch (Stuttgart, Germany: Ed. Stuttgart VS Verlagshaus Stuttgart GmbH, 1992), and Dan Malan, “Jules Verne, Original Illustrations,” The Classics Collector (Dec. 1993).
• Edmondo Marcucci, Les Illustrations des Voyages Extraordinaires de Jules Verne (Bordeaux: Ed. Société Jules Verne, 1956) 18-19.
• Ron Miller, in an e-mail message to me on Sept. 27, 1997.
• Other illustrators of the short stories in Le Docteur Ox include Lorenz Froelich (1820-1908), Adrien Marie (1848-1891), Théophile Schuler (1821-1878), and Edouard Yon (1855-1930).
• Richard Dalby, “Bayard, Emile-Antoine.” In Robert Weinburg, A Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (NY & Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988) 47.
• Marcucci, 22-23.
• Miller, op. cit.
• Charles Lemire, Jules Verne (Paris: Berger-Lévrault, 1908) 145.
• Marcucci, 25.
• Pierre Sichel, “Les Illustrateurs de Jules Verne,” Europe 112-13 (1955): 95.
• Peter Costello, Jules Verne, Inventor of Science Fiction (NY: Scribner’s, 1978) 209.

plagiarized directly from Riou’s illustrations for J. Chaffanjon’s article “Voyage aux sources de l’Orénoque,” Le Tour du Monde (1889): tome 56—one of Verne’s sources for this novel. See Olivier Dumas, “À propos de Verne et Chaffanjon,” Bulletin de la Société Jules Verne 125 (1998): 10-14.

• Sichel, 90-98.
• “The illustrations in Verne’s books are not lithographs. They are woodcuts reproduced via electrotypes (a lithograph is an entirely different printing process involving—as its name implies—a wet stone, a greasy crayon and water repellant ink; today, of course, ‘lithography’ is used more broadly in the printing industry to describe a process of printing with metal plates replacing the ink-repellent stones still used by artists—the principle remains the same, however). There were a number of ways to reproduce a woodcut. You could print directly from the block, of course, but only if the print run was short since the wood would deteriorate quickly with use. (End-grain boxwood was the most commonly-used wood; since boxwood does not come in very large chunks, blocks would be bolted together to provide a surface for very large illustrations, where you can often see the vertical and horizontal seams. To save time, engraving houses would often break up such a block and have each separate piece worked on by a different engraver. Early on, the illustrator would paint or draw his illustration directly on the block—the original drawing would, of course, be destroyed by the engraving process. Later, the art would be transferred to the block photographi cally, by coating the wood surface with a photosensitive emulsion.) The cut could be reproduced in metal by either electroplating it and then making another electroplate copy from that (to make a ‘positive’) or by making a papier maché ‘mat’ and then taking an electroplate ‘positive.’ This would not only allow for longer print runs, but allowed the publisher to make any number of copies of the original printing plate (which are what Hetzel would send to, say, Scribner’s or Sampson Low).” Miller, op. cit.
• V. my article “The ‘New’ Jules Verne,” SFS 22.1 (March 1995): 35-46.
• In addition to Benett and Roux, Félicien de Myrbach (1853-1940) also produced illustrations for Verne’s posthumous short-story collection Hier et demain , in particular for the short stories “La Famille Raton” [The Rat Family]—see the delightful English-language reprint titled The Adventures of the Rat Family (NY: Oxford UP, 1993)—and “Monsieur Ré-Dièze et Mademoiselle Mi-Bémol” [Mr. Ray Sharp and Miss Me Flat].
• Although not appearing during the “Hetzel” period of 1863-1919, three “rediscovered” works by Jules Verne published recently also carry original illustrations. They include the much ballyhooed Paris au XXe siècle [ Paris in the Twentieth Century ] illustrated by François Schuiten, San Carlos et autres récits inédits [ San Carlos and other unpublished stories ] illustrated by Tardi, and Un Prêtre en 1835 [ A Priest in 1835 ] also illustrated by Tardi.

WORKS CITED

Borgeaud, Georges. “Les Illustrateurs de Jules Verne,” Arts et Lettres 15 (1949): 72.

----------. “Jules Verne et ses illustrateurs,” L’Arc 29 (1966): 43-45.

Bottin, André. Bibliographie des éditions illustrées des Voyages Extraordinaires de Jules Verne . Contes: Chez l’auteur, 1978.

Chauchoy, Philippe. Léon Benett, illustrateur de Jules Verne . Amiens: Centre Culturel de la Somme, 1991.

Chesneaux, Jean. “Les Illustrations des romans de Jules Verne,” Bulletin de la Société Jules Verne 37-38 (1976): 114-15.

Compère, Daniel. “Fenêtres latérales.” In Jules Verne 4: texte, image, spectacle , ed. François Raymond. Paris: Minard, 1983. 55-71.

----------. “Poétique de la carte,” Bulletin de la Société Jules Verne 50 (1979): 69-74.

Costello, Peter. Jules Verne, Inventor of Science Fiction . NY: Scribner’s, 1978.

Dalby, Richard. “Bayard, Emile-Antoine.” In Robert Weinburg, A Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. 47.

Dumas, Olivier. “Jules Verne et Benett, avec cinq lettres inédites de Jules Verne.” In Jules Verne 4: texte, image, spectacle , ed. François Raymond. Paris: Minard, 1983. 184-85.

Evans, Arthur B. “The Extraordinary Libraries of Jules Verne,” L’Esprit créateur 28: 1 (1988): 75-86.

----------. “Jules Verne and the French Literary Canon” in Jules Verne: Narratives of Modernity (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, forthcoming in 1998).

----------. Jules Verne Rediscovered . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.

Foucault, Michel. “Arrière fable” L’Arc 29 (1966): 6.

Giraudo, Lucien. “L’Illustration: une autre façon de voir et de lire Jules Verne,” Nouvelle Revue Pédagogique 2 (1991): 24-25.

Helling, Cornelius. “Les Illustrateurs des Voyages Extraordinaires ,” Bulletin de la Société Jules Verne 11-13 (1938): 140-46.

Hetzel, Pierre-Jules. “Avertissement de l’Editeur” In Jules Verne, Les Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras . Paris: Hetzel, 1866. 7-8.

Lemire, Charles. Jules Verne . Paris: Berger-Lévrault, 1908.

Malan, Dan. “Jules Verne, Original Illustrations,” The Classics Collector (Dec. 1993): 18-19.

Marcucci, Edmondo. Les Illustrations des Voyages Extraordinaires de Jules Verne . Bordeaux: Ed. Société Jules Verne, 1956.

Martin, Charles-Noël. La Vie et l’oeuvre de Jules Verne . Paris: Michel de l’Ormeraie, 1978.

Micha, René. “Les Légendes sous les images,” L’Arc 29 (1966): 50-55.

Miller, Walter James and Frederick Paul Walter. “Verne’s Controversial Giant Squid: Continued,” Extraordinary Voyages: The Newsletter of the North American Jules Verne Society 4:1 (Dec. 1997): 1-5.

Osterwalder, Marcus. Dictionnaire des illustrateurs, 1800-1914 . Paris: Hubschmid & Bouret, n.d.

Pitrou, Pierre. “Les Illustrations des romans de Jules Verne.” Mémoire, L’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 1977.

Rie, Hans. “Der Triumph des Holzstiches. Die Originalillustrationen des Romanwerks Jules Verne.” In Jules Verne Handbuch . Stuttgart, Germany: Ed. Stuttgart VS Verlagshaus Stuttgart GmbH, 1992. 249-261.

Sichel, Pierre. “Les Illustrateurs de Jules Verne,” Europe 112-13 (1955): 90-98.

Soriano, Marc. Jules Verne . Paris: Julliard, 1978.

Tamaro, Françoise. “Textes et illustrations dans les romans de Jules Verne, de 1863 à nos jours.” Mémoire de D.E.A. de littérature comparée, Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne, 1993.

Taves, Brian and Steve Michaluk, eds. The Jules Verne Encyclopedia . Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996.

Van Herp, Jacques. Les Univers extraordinaires des illustrations de Jules Verne . Racour, Belgium: Ed. Phénix, 1992.

Weinberg, Robert. A Biographical Dictionary of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists . Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.

Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires Illustrators and engravers of the first illustrated editions

Cinq semaines en ballon (1863, Five Weeks in a Balloon )—51 illustrations Edouard Riou (40), Henri de Montaut (5), unsigned (6)—engravers: Coste, Delaville, Dumont, Fournier, Hildibrand, Pannemaker, Prunaire

Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras (1866, Voyages of Capt. Hatteras )—259 Edouard Riou (190), Henri de Montaut (69)—engravers: Barbant, Cazat, Delaville, Dumont, Hildibrand, Joliet, Linton, Pannemaker, Pierdon, Pisan, Prunaire

Voyage au centre de la terre (1864, Journey to the Center of the Earth )—56 Edouard Riou—engravers: Pannemaker, Gauchard, Maurand

De la terre à la lune (1865, From the Earth to the Moon )—41 Henri de Montaut—engravers: Pannemaker, Doms

Les Enfants du capitaine Grant (1867, The Children of Capt. Grant )—175 Edouard Riou—engravers: Delaville, Gauchard, Maurand, Pannemaker, Prunaire

Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1869-70, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea )—110 Edouard Riou (24), Alphonse de Neuville (86)—engraver: Hildibrand

Autour de la lune (1870, Around the Moon )—45 Alphonse de Neuville (6), Emile Bayard (39)—engraver: Hildibrand

Une Ville flottante, suivi des Forceurs du blocus (1871, A Floating City, and the Blockade Runners )—44 Jules Ferat—engravers: Pannemaker, Doms

Aventures de trois Russes et de trois Anglais (1872, Adventures of 3 Englishmen and 3 Russians )—53 Jules Ferat—engravers: Pannemaker, Dutheil

Le Pays des fourrures (1873, The Fur Country )—103 Jules Ferat (74), Alfred Quesnay de Beaurepaire (29)—engravers: Pannemaker, Hildibrand, Dumont, Louis

Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1873, Around the World in 80 Days )—56 Alphonse de Neuville (7), Léon Benett (49)—engravers: Dumont, Hildibrand, Louis, Pannemaker, Prévost

Le Docteur Ox (recueil): Une Fantaisie du docteur Ox, Maître Zacharius, Un Hivernage dans les glaces, Un Drame dans les airs, Quarantième ascension au mont Blanc (1874, Doctor Ox [short stories]: Doctor Ox’s Experiment, Master Zacharius, Wintering in the Ice, Drama in the Air, Fortieth Ascension of Mont Blanc )—61 Lorenz Froelich (15), Théophile Schuler (10), Edmond Yon (12), Adrien Marie (16), Emile Bayard (6), Bertrand (2)—engravers: Barbant, Pannemaker, Hildibrand

L’Ile mystérieuse (1874-75, The Mysterious Island )—152 Jules Ferat—engraver: Barbant

Le Chancellor (1875, The Survivors of the Chancellor )—58 Edouard Riou (45), Jules Ferat (13)—engravers: Barbant, Crosbie, Dumont, Hildibrand, Louis, Meaulle, Pannemaker

Michel Strogoff (1876, Michel Strogoff, The Courier of the Czar )—91 Jules Ferat (90), Léon Benett (1)—engraver: Barbant

Hector Servadac (1877, Hector Servadac )—99 Paul Philippoteaux—engraver: Laplante

Les Indes noires (1877, The Black Indies )—45 Jules Ferat—engraver: Barbant

Un Capitaine de quinze ans (1878, Dick Sands, The Boy Captain )—94 Henri Meyer—engravers: Barbant, Meaulle

Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum, (1879, The 500 Million of the Begum, The Begum’s Fortune )—43 Léon Benett—engravers: Barbant, Crosbie, Dumouza, Hildibrand, Louis, Meaulle, Pannemaker

Les Tribulations d’un Chinois en Chine (1879, The Tribulations of a Chinese Gentleman in China) )—52 Léon Benett—engravers: Barbant, Doumouza Dutertre, Deulard, Hildibrand, Louis, Meaulle, Maylander, Pannemaker

La Maison à vapeur (1880, The Steam House )—99 Léon Benett—engravers: Barbant, Baude, Bellenger, Delangle, Dumouza, Froment, Heulard, Hildibrand, Joffroy, Louis Maylander, Meaulle, Pannemaker, Quesnel, Verdeil

La Jangada (1881, The Giant Raft )—98 Léon Benett (82), Edouard Riou (16)—engravers: Barbant, Bellenger, Delangle, Dumouza, Dutertre, Duvivier, Froment, Heulard, Hildibrand, Louis, Meaulle, Thomas

Le Rayon vert (1882, The Green Ray )—44 Léon Benett—engravers: Barbant, Bellenger, Delangle, Dumouza, Dutertre, Hildibrand, Meaulle

L’Ecole des Robinsons (1882, Robinson’s School )—51 Léon Benett—engravers: Bellenger, Delangle, Dumouza, Dutertre, Meaulle, Verdeil

Kéraban-le-Têtu (1883, Kéraban the Inflexible )—101 Léon Benett—engravers: Barbant, Bellenger, Bure, Delangle, Dumouza, Dutertre, Froment, Heulard, Hildibrand, Lafontan, Leriverend-Dochy, Louis, Meaulle, Moller, Verdeil

L’Etoile du sud (1884, The Southern Star )—62 Léon Benett—engravers: Bellenger, Bure, Dumouza, Dutertre, Froment, Heulard, Hildibrand, Ladmiral, Louis, Meaulle, Moller, Puyplat, Verdeil

L’Archipel en feu (1884, The Archipelago on Fire )—49 Léon Benett—engravers: Barbant, Bure, Delangle, Dumouza, Froment, Guillaume, Heulard, Hildibrand, Ladmiral, Louis, Meaulle, Moller, Puyplat

Mathias Sandorf (1885, Mathias Sandorf )—111 Léon Benett—engravers: Barbant, Bellenger, Bure, Delangle, Dumouza, Dutertre, Froment, Guillaume, Heulard, Hildibrand, Jacob, Ladmiral, Louis, Meaulle, Moller, Pannemaker L’Epave du Cynthia (1885, The Salvage of the “Cynthia” )—25 George Roux—engravers: Bellenger, Bure, Froment, Ladmiral, Mollet, Rousseau

Un Billet de loterie (1886, The Lottery Ticket )—41 George Roux—engravers: Bure, Delangle, Dumouza, Froment, Hildibrand, Louis, Moller

Robur-le-Conquérant (1886, The Clipper of the Clouds , Robur the Conqueror )—45 Léon Benett—engravers: Bure, Delangle, Dumouza, Dutertre, Hildibrand, Ladmiral, Louis, Moller, Pannemaker, Rousseau

Nord contre Sud (1887, North Versus South )—85 Léon Benett—engravers: Bure, Delangle, Dochy, Dumouza, Froment, Ladmiral, Louis, Moller, Pannemaker, Puyplat, Vintraut

Le Chemin de France (1887, The Flight to France )—37 George Roux—engravers: Bure, Dochy, Dumouza, Dutertre, Froment, Ladmiral, Louis, Moller, Napier, Pannemaker, Rousseau, Vintraut

Deux ans de vacances (1888, A Two Years’ Vacation )—91 Léon Benett—engravers: Bure, Charpentié, Delangle, Dutertre, Froment, Ladmiral, Levasseur, Moller, Napier, Pannemaker, Petit, Puyplat, Rousseau, Vintraut

Famille-sans-nom (1889, Family Without a Name )—82 Georges Tiret-Bognet—engravers: Bellenger, Bure, Delangle, Dumouza, Dutertre, Froment, Hamel, Ladmiral, Louis, Moller, Pannemaker, Petit, Peulot, Puyplat, Rousseau, Vintraut

Sans Dessus Dessous (1889 Topsy-Turvy , The Purchase of the North Pole )—36 George Roux—engravers: Dumouza, Froment, Hamel, Ladmiral, Louis, Pannemaker, Petit, Peulot, Vintraut

César Cascabel (1890, Caesar Cascabel )—85 George Roux—engravers: Bellenger, Bure, Delangle, Dumouza, Dutertre, Froment, Hamel, Ladmiral, Louis, De Lucders, Moller, Peulot, Puyplat, Rousseau

Mistress Branican (1891, Mistress Branican )—83 Léon Benett—engravers: Delangle, Dumouza, Duplessis, Dutertre, Froment, Hamel, Gusman, Moller, Pannemaker, Peulot, Puyplat, Rousseau, Vintraut

Le Château des Carpathes (1892, The Castle of the Carpathians )—40 Léon Benett—engravers: ?

Claudius Bombarnac (1892, Claudius Bombarnac )—55 Léon Benett—engravers: Barbant, Bauchart, Burgun, Carlier, Charpentié, Delangle, Duplessis, Dutertre, Froment, Gusman, Hamel, Moller, Morizet, Pannemaker, Peulot, Puyplat, Toquenne

P’tit-bonhomme (1893, Foundling Mick )—85 Léon Benett—engravers: ?

Mirifiques aventures de maître Antifer (1894, Captain Antifer )—77 George Roux—engravers: Baudouin, Bories, Dumouza, Froment, Gusman, Hamel, Lerondeau, Maylander, Moller, Pannemaker, Fougeron-Vignerot

L’Ile à hélice (1895, The Floating Island , Propeller Island )—80 Léon Benett—engravers: ?

Face au drapeau (1896, For the Flag )—42 Léon Benett—engravers: ?

Clovis Dardentor (1896, Clovis Dardentor )—47 Léon Benett—engravers: ?

Le Sphinx des glaces (1897, The Ice Sphinx )—68 George Roux—engravers: Barbant, Delangle, Duplessis, Froment, Froment fils, Guerelle, Gusman, Hamel, Marx, Maylander, Moller, Outrebon, Pannemaker, Puyplat

Le Superbe Orénoque (1898, The Superb Orinoco [untranslated])—71 George Roux—engravers: Ducourtioux, Duplessis, Froment, Guerelle, Hamel, Maylander, Moller, Pannemaker, Puyplat

Le Testament d’un excentrique (1899, The Will of an Eccentric )—61 George Roux—engravers: Duplessis, Froment, Guerelle, Maylander, Pannemaker

Seconde Patrie (1900, Second Homeland )—67 George Roux—engravers: Clément, Duplessis, Froment, Guerelle, Hamel, Mathieu, Maylander, Pannemaker, Puyplat

Le Village aérien (1901, The Village in the Treetops )—39 George Roux—engravers: Barbant, Clément, Duplessis, Froment, Guerelle, Mathieu, Maylander, Puyplat

Les Histoires de Jean-Marie Cabidoulin (1901, The Sea Serpent: The Yarns of Jean Marie Cabidoulin )—29 George Roux—engravers: Clément, Duplessis, Froment, Froment fils, Guerelle, Gusman, Mathieu, Maylander

Les Frères Kip (1902, The Kip Brothers [untranslated])—40 George Roux—engravers: Clément, Duplessis, Froment, Gusman, Mathieu, May-lander

Bourses de voyage (1903, Travel Scholarships [untranslated])—49 Léon Benett—engravers: Duplessis, Dutertre, Froment, Gusman, Maylander

Un Drame en Livonie (1904, A Drama in Livonia )—33 Léon Benett—engravers: Barbant, Duplessis, Dutertre, Froment, Gusman, Mathieu, Maylander

Maître du Monde (1904, The Master of the World )—31 George Roux—engravers: Barbant, Duplessis, Dutertre, Froment, Gusman, Mathieu, Maylander, Pannemaker

L’Invasion de la mer (1905, The Invasion of the Sea [untranslated])—28 Léon Benett—engravers: Barbant, Duplessis, Froment, Gusman, Mathieu, Maylander, Vintraut

*Le Phare au bout du monde (1905, The Lighthouse at the End of the World )—33 George Roux—engravers: Barbant, Clément, Duplessis, Dutertre, Froment, Mathieu, Maylander, Vintraut

*Le Volcan d’or (1906, The Golden Volcano )—47 George Roux—engravers: Dutertre, Froment, Maylander

*L’Agence Thompson and Co. (1907, The Thompson Travel Agency )—44 Léon Benett—engraver: Froment

*La Chasse au météore (1908, The Chase of the Golden Meteor )—33 George Roux

*Le Pilote du Danube (1908, The Danube Pilot )—29 George Roux

*Les Naufragés du Jonathan (1909, The Survivors of the Jonathan )—58 George Roux

*Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz (1910, The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz )—37 George Roux

*Hier et demain (recueil): La Famille Raton, M. Ré-dièze et Mlle. Mi-bémol, La Destinée de Jean Morénas, Le Humbug, Au XXXIXeme siècle: Journée d’un journaliste américain en 2889, L’Eternel Adam (1910, Yesterday and Tomorrow [short stories]: The Rat Family, Mr. Ray Sharp and Miss Me Flat, The Fate of Jean Morenas, The Humbug, In the Twenty-Ninth Century: The Day of an American Journalist in 2889, Eternal Adam )—36 George Roux (16), Félicien Myrbach (6), Léon Benett (14)

*L’Etonnante aventure de la mission Barsac (1919, The Barsac Mission )—56 George Roux (* posthumous)

Jules Verne’s original Voyages Extraordinaires contained over four thousand illustrations—an average of 60+ per novel in the popular Hetzel red and gold “luxury” French editions. These Victorian-looking wood-cut plates and maps constituted an integral part of Verne’s early sf oeuvre and, intercalated into the text at intervals of every 6-8 pages, they provided a powerful and omnipresent visual support structure to the text’s fictional narrative, its embedded pedagogical lessons, and its “arm-chair voyage” exoticism. The world-wide popularity of Verne’s romans scientifiques was no doubt at least partly attributable to the presence of these illustrations in his works. Thus, given the hermeneutic and historical importance of the illustrations in Verne’s oeuvre, it is somewhat surprising that, to date, they and the individuals who created them have been virtually ignored in both sf and Vernian criticism.

This article discusses the many varieties and functions of the illustrations in Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires , the talented artists and engravers who produced them, their

collaborative working relationship with Verne and the editor Hetzel, and the technological evolution of this craft itself from Verne’s earliest works in the 1860s to his final posthumous novel published in 1919.

JV.Gilead.org.il Copyright © Zvi Har’El $Date: 2007/11/14 22:04:04 $

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Jules Verne in 1892, photo: Wikimedia

“You like the sea, Captain?”

“Yes; I love it! The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides… The globe began with sea, so to speak; and who knows if it will not end with it?”

The world of Jules Verne was a remarkable one. Through the novels which comprise The Extraordinary Voyages, Les Voyages Extraordinaire, and the beautifully detailed illustrations which accompanied them, Verne remarkably envisioned what is common place to us nearly a century and a half later: hot air balloons, helicopters, airplanes, submarines, exploration of the moon, the north and south poles, and the use of hydrogen as an energy source. The names of his characters and inventions, such as Captain Nemo, Phileas Fogg, and the submarine Nautilus have become part of popular culture. Considered the “Father of Science Fiction”, Jules Verne was a true visionary.

Jules Gabriel Verne was born on February 8, 1828 on the small island of Feydeau, in Nantes , France, a busy maritime port city on the Loire River in the Upper Brittany region of Western France. The house at 2, quai Jean-Bart, where he spent the first 14 years– and the daily life of the islands, ports and boats– became the nexus of much of his work. It is said, when he was 11 years old, he clandestinely embarked aboard the three-masted  La Coralie, bound for the Indies, but before the ocean-going vessel put to sea, it was intercepted by his father. The authenticity of this incident is far from certain, but his imagination and passion for travel and adventure proved undeniable.

At age six, Verne was sent to the first of a series of four boarding schools he would attend. His first teacher, the widow of a naval captain who had disappeared 30 years before, often told her students exciting stories about her missing husband being a castaway like Robinson Crusoe, who would eventually return from a desert island. This theme and others made an indelible impression on the young Verne. At the age of eight he was able to recite verses from memory in Greek and Latin.

While attending his last boarding school, in-between courses on rhetoric and philosophy, Verne began to write poetry. The poetry of happenstance was encouraged in his family – births, marriages, celebrations – and he was never without a pad and pencil. His father, a prosperous lawyer, sent him to Paris in 1847 to study law, hoping that as his first-born son, he would follow in his footsteps. Although he earned his law degree, Verne rejected his parents’ middle-class respectability, refusing his father’s offer to open a law practice in Nantes, because he was secretly planning a literary career.

A young Jules Verne in 1856, photo: Wikimedia

Inherently drawn to the literary and theatrical scene in Paris, Verne lived a Bohemian life. He frequented many Parisian salons and befriended a group of artists, and writers that included Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, both of whose work he respectfully emulated. It was through his friendship with Dumas and Dumas son, that his first play, Broken Straws , was produced in 1850, reaping a modicum of success. Despite continued parental pressure, Verne continued to write and in 1852 he took a poorly paid position as secretary of the Théâtre-Lyrique,   in order to have a platform to produce two more of his pieces, Blind Man’s Bluff and The Companions of the Marjolaine.

Verne tried different forms of writing, adding comedies, operettas and short stories to his repertoire. His short stories were particularly good and were frequently published in the popular magazine, The Museum of Families , which was an illustrated French literary journal founded by Émile de Girardin. Surrounded within its pages by illustrious writers such as Dumas and Balzac, Verne couldn’t help but feel fame and fortune was within reach.

In 1856, Verne met, fell in love with, and the following year married, Honorine de Viane, a young widow with two daughters. Realizing he needed a stronger financial foundation for his new family, he began working as a stockbroker alongside his wife’s brother. Membership in the Paris Exchange did not interfere with his daily writing schedule, however, because he adopted a rigorous timetable, rising at five o’clock in the morning in order to put in several hours researching and writing before beginning work at the Bourse. In 1857, he published his first book, The 1857 Salon.

Verne’s personality was contradictory, not terribly unusual for a writer. Capable of extreme conviviality, he was equally happy alone in his study or when sailing the English Channel in a converted fishing boat. Verne and his wife made approximately 20 sea voyages to the British Isles. These journeys inspired him to pen Backwards to Britain;  however, the novel wasn’t published until 1989, 84 years after his death. In 1861, the couple’s only child, Michel-Jean-Pierre Verne, was born. It was in this period that Verne met the noted geographer and explorer Jacques Arago, who continued to travel extensively despite his blindness (he had lost his sight completely in 1837). The two men became good friends, and Arago’s innovative and witty accounts of his travels led Verne toward developing an new genre of literature called “travel writing.”

By 1862, Verne’s literary career had failed to garner major attention, but his luck changed with the introduction to editor and publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Hetzel encouraged Verne to develop his evolving style- “Roman de la Science”, adventure narratives within the framework of scientific research. In 1863 Hertzel published Five Weeks in a Balloon , or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen , to wide acclaim and Jules Verne the novelist was officially born. Hetzel, who previously rejected Backwards to Britain because he felt it was more cerebral and less exciting, had made the right decision. It was the first in a series of 54 extraordinary journeys by air over central Africa, at that time largely unexplored. Verne retired from stockbroking and devoted himself full time to writing. Years later he would say, “I wrote Five Weeks in a Balloon , not as a story about ballooning, but as a story about Africa. I always was greatly interested in geography and travel, and I wanted to give a romantic description of Africa. Now, there was no means of taking my travelers through Africa otherwise than in a balloon, and that is why a balloon was introduced.”

In 1864, Hetzel published The Adventures of Captain Hatteras , which centered on an expedition to the North Pole (not actually reached until 1909 by Robert Peary), and A Journey to the Center of the Earth which described the adventures of a party of explorers and scientists who descend the crater of an Icelandic volcano and discover an underground world. That same year, Verne’s  Paris in the Twentieth Century was rejected for publication by Hertzel. “No one will believe your depictions of skyscrapers, gas-fuelled cars and mass transit systems, because they are too far fetched.” An interesting historical aside to this particular book is that Verne kept the unpublished manuscript hidden in a large bronze safe. It was discovered by his great-grandson after the sale of the family home.

From the Earth to the Moon, photo: Wikimedia

In 1865 Verne was back in print with From the Earth to the Moon , which described how two adventurous Americans, joined by a Frenchman, arrange to be fired in a hollow projectile from a gigantic cannon that lifts them out of Earth’s gravity field and takes them close to the moon. Verne not only pictured the state of weightlessness his “astronauts” would experience during their flight, but he had the remarkably prescient idea to locate their launching site in Florida, where nearly all of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) launches take place today. Two years later, Hetzel published Verne’s Illustrated Geography of France and Her Colonies . That same year Verne traveled to the United States, and though he only stayed a week, he managed a trip up the Hudson River to Albany, then another to Niagara Falls.

In 1870, Hetzel published Verne’s masterpiece, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea , relating the voyages of the submarine Nautilus, built and commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo, one of the literary figures in whom Verne incorporated many of his own character traits. By this point, his works were being translated into English, and he could comfortably live on the money made from his writing. Although he was enjoying immense professional success, he began experiencing discord in his personal life. He sent his rebellious son to a reformatory school, and a few years later he was shot in the leg by his nephew, Gaston, leaving him with a limp for the rest of his life. A week later his editor and publisher, Hetzel, died, and the following year his mother passed away. A man possessed, Verne continued to travel and write, his writing taking a darker tone with books like The Purchase of the North Pole and Master of the World , the later warning of the social dangers wrought by uncontrolled technological advancements.

Beginning in late 1872, the serialized version of Verne’s famed Around the World in Eighty Days appeared in print. The story of Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout took readers on an extraordinary world tour at a time when travel to exotic lands was seductively alluring. In the century since its original debut, this magical work has been adapted for the theatre, radio, television and film.

Verne remained prolific throughout the decade, penning, The Mysterious Island , The Survivors of the Chancellor , Michael Strogoff , and Dick Sand: A Captain at Fifteen , among many others. Years later his written successes became triumphant when adapted for the stage. Around the World in Eighty Days , Michael Strogoff and The Children of Captain Grant were spectacularly staged productions that filled the theatres of the Châtelet and Porte Saint-Martin in Paris, every night for months.

Jules Verne’s tomb in the cemetery at Amiens, photo: Wikimedia

In 1888, Verne moved to the northern French city of Amiens, Picardie. He was elected a councillor of Amiens, a position he served faithfully for the next 15 years. He also continued to travel and write. His last publication was Master of the World in 1904. After developing diabetes, Jules Verne died at his home on March 24, 1905, but his literary output didn’t end with his death. His now-reformed son assumed control of his father’s uncompleted manuscripts, finishing and publishing them himself. The Lighthouse at the End of the World in 1905, The Golden Volcano in 1906 and The Hunt for the Golden Meteor in 1908.

Verne’s novels have had an extensive influence on scientists and writers from Wernher von Braun to Antoine Saint-Exupéry. In the words of science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, “We are all, in one way or another, the children of Jules Verne.”

Jules Verne is buried in La Madeleine Cemetery in Amiens, Picardie, France. A massive marble statue of a man emerging from the earth reaching towards the sky adorns his grave.

Lead photo credit : Jules Verne in 1892, photo: Wikimedia

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Sue Aran lives in the Gers department of southwest France. She is the owner of French Country Adventures, which provides private, personally-guided, small-group food & wine adventures into Gascony, the Pays Basque and Provence. She writes a monthly blog about her life in France and is a contributor to Bonjour Paris and France Today magazines.

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The Illustrators of Jules Verne's Voyages Extraordinaires

Jules Verne’s original Voyages Extraordinaires contained over four thousand illustrations—an average of 60+ per novel in the popular Hetzel red and gold “luxury” French editions. These Victorian-looking wood-cut plates and maps constituted an integral part of Verne’s early sf oeuvre and, intercalated into the text at intervals of every 6-8 pages, they provided a powerful and omnipresent visual support structure to the text’s fictional narrative, its embedded pedagogical lessons, and its “arm-chair voyage” exoticism. The world-wide popularity of Verne’s romans scientifiques was no doubt at least partly attributable to the presence of these illustrations in his works. 270 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 25 (1998) Thus, given the hermeneutic and historical importance of the illustrations in Verne’s oeuvre, it is somewhat surprising that, to date, they and the individuals who created them have been virtually ignored in both sf and Vernian criticism. This article discusses the many varie...

Related Papers

Arthur Evans

Australian Journal of French Studies

Daniel Compère

Science Fiction Studies

Narratives of Modernity

During the final decades of the nineteenth century in France, the unprecedented success of Jules Verne’s "Voyages Extraordinaires" began to generate a host of “Verne School” imitators including Paul d’Ivoi, Louis Boussenard, Maurice Champagne, Georges Le Faure, and Henry de Graffigny, among others. They were very prolific and specialized in science-fictional adventure stories that recycled the same themes of exploration and technology and the same narrational trademarks of didacticism and "Bildungsroman" that characterized Verne’s most memorable fictions. This essay examines the sf works of the most popular of these Verne School writers, Paul d’Ivoi. In the history of French science fiction, d’Ivoi’s twenty-one novels, collectively titled the "Voyages Excentriques," may be viewed as a kind of stepping-stone between Verne’s generally conservative “hard sf” model and the more fantastic “speculative sf” of early twentieth-century sf writers such as J.-H. Rosny aîné, Gustave Le Rouge, and Maurice Renard. Originally published in Science Fiction Studies (36.2 (2009): 217-234.

Trinity Journal of Literary Translation

Emerson S F Richards-Hoppe

This translation was part of a larger project I did in Professor Losensky’s translation theory course in the Spring of 2014 at Indiana University. I also wrote an analytical paper considering the development and cultural contexts of the Spanish and German translations of Voyage.

This article offers a detailed comparison of the original French editions of Jules Verne’s "Voyages Extraordinaires" and their English translations. Many of Verne’s most popular novels were severely abridged, simplified, and ideologically censored in their English-language versions. Several of these bowdlerized translations became the “standard” editions of Verne’s works in the UK and the US and are still being published today. As a result, most anglophone readers of Verne have never had the opportunity to read the real Verne. It seems clear that these poor translations are largely responsible for Verne’s reputation in anglophone countries as a prescient but non-literary writer of adventure stories for children. More modern and accurate English translations of Verne’s oeuvre are needed to correct this misconception. Originally published in Science Fiction Studies 32.1 (2005): 80-104.

Lisa Voigt , Elio Brancaforte

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The Extraordinary Voyages of Jules Verne

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The fantastic tales of adventure penned over a hundred years ago by Jules Verne still live in the minds of hearts of millions. Futuristic concepts and legendary heroes mix with visions of a utopian world and crazed madmen.

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• Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 1.33:1
• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches; 3.5 ounces
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ 0883629511740
• Director ‏ : ‎ Philip Gardiner
• Media Format ‏ : ‎ NTSC, Multiple Formats, Color
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 12 minutes
• Release date ‏ : ‎ March 27, 2008
• Producers ‏ : ‎ Reality Films
• Studio ‏ : ‎ Reality Entertainment
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0016NJ4U2
• Writers ‏ : ‎ Philip Gardiner
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• #917 in Faith & Spirituality (Movies & TV)
• #6,798 in Special Interests (Movies & TV)

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The Extraordinary Voyages of Jules Verne

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JV: The Extraordinary Adventures of Jules Verne

Young Jules Verne is just and ordinary teenager of his age studying to becoming a lawyer, but considers his own life so bored that himself wants to find adventures, in other words be part of... Read all Young Jules Verne is just and ordinary teenager of his age studying to becoming a lawyer, but considers his own life so bored that himself wants to find adventures, in other words be part of something greater, be greater and proved his own inventions but questions is what kind of... Read all Young Jules Verne is just and ordinary teenager of his age studying to becoming a lawyer, but considers his own life so bored that himself wants to find adventures, in other words be part of something greater, be greater and proved his own inventions but questions is what kind of prices does he have to pay to be part of what he wants?

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10 Best Movies Based On Jules Verne Books, Ranked

• Jules Verne's work has inspired numerous movie adaptations and is the foundation for some of the earliest science fiction films.
• Some Jules Verne adaptations are entertaining and enjoyable, while others are outdated and not required viewing.
• The film "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (2008) successfully updates Verne's classic story with modern special effects and remains fun to watch.

Jules Verne is undoubtedly one of the most prominent authors in science fiction , and its no wonder that his works have inspired countless movie adaptations. One of the most translated writers in human history, the French author has written legendary tales like 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in 80 Days . Verne's daring imagination put him far ahead of his time, and it's no surprise that movie studios have sought to replicate his sense of wonder with multiple live-action adaptations of Jules Verne stories .

Jules Verne's work has become the foundation for some of the earliest films in the science fiction genre , some of which even hold up today remarkably well as enjoyable, adventurous romps through the imagination. The mid-to-late 2000s saw a resurgence of Jules Verne films as well, to varying degrees of success, with studios hoping to recapture the joy and nostalgia of the earliest films to adapt Verne's books for a new generation. With so many familiar titles, it's a difficult task to distinguish the very best depictions of Jules Verne's novels over the years.

Journey To The Center Of The Earth

An easily-overlooked made-for-TV movie, the two-part Journey to the Center of the Earth special was a solid attempt at getting to the center of what made Verne's original story so memorable. The film is decidedly slow-moving and low-budgeted, with some creature effects occasionally bordering the precipice of acceptable for a shoestring budget, but the C-List actors can often bring in decent performances amid the campy set-dressing. Despite it's many flaws, the two-part film is an entertaining, knowingly campy jog through Verne's beloved tale of subterranean exploration.

Master Of The World

Master of the World is the sole film to adapt Jules Verne's novel of the same name, and when compared to his other, more well-known stories, it's easy to see why. The narrative of a rich maniac dedicated to the idea of threatening the world's governments into laying down their arms isn't quite as whimsical as Verne's other premises. As for the film, despite rich talent from the likes of a young Charles Bronson and the legendary Vincent Price , the special effects are especially outdated, even for the time period . Master of the World is fun, but not required viewing.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island

Journey 2: the mysterious island.

Journey 2: The Mysterious Island is the follow-up to 2008's Journey to the Center of the Earth. The film takes place four years after the original, showing Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson teaming up with Hank, his stepfather, to find his lost grandfather. Due to scheduling issues, Brendan Fraser wasn't able to return as Trevor Anderson but was replaced by Dwayne Johnson as the film's lead.

Release Date 2012-02-12

Director Brad Peyton

Cast Josh Hutcherson, Michael Caine, Vanessa Hudgens, Dwayne Johnson

This semi-adaptation picks up where 2008's Journey to the Center of the Earth left off, replacing Brendan Fraser with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. As the passable action adventure delves into the incredible isle, the tone rides a strange line, at once too scary for younger viewers and too subdued for older ones. Amid mediocre CGI and all-too subdued performances, the best thing that can be said about Journey 2: The Mysterious Island was how it pioneered the art of throwing Johnson into a jungle, later done better in films like Jungle Cruise and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle .

Around The World In 80 Days

Though the idea of circumnavigating the globe in the span of 80 days is now a triviality, in Verne's time, such a time was the stuff of science fiction. The 1956 take on the story is an incredibly grand adventure comedy with a runtime that feels nearly as long as the titular journey itself. The international cast is crammed with stars of Hollywood's Golden Age , who had enough charisma between them to earn the film an early Academy Award for Best Picture. Today, the spectacle and aged humor can be best appreciated as a museum of 50s stardom.

Starring a young Josh Hutcherson and Brendan Fraser, still hot off the success of The Mummy trilogy , 2008's Journey To The Center Of The Earth had all the makings of an action-adventure hit. Being the first to truly update one of Verne's classic stories with modern special effects, the film still looks great 15 years later, even if it is marred by several obvious moments clearly meant to be enjoyed in the context of a 3-D theater. Adapting the classic adventure about as well as it could have, Journey To The Center Of The Earth isn't revolutionary, but undeniably fun.

While most adaptations of Verne's work make at least some departures from the source material, 2004's Around The World In 80 Days completely re-imagines the story as a raucous action-comedy. Though critically-panned at the time, the film is endlessly re-watchable today , with eye-popping action choreography courtesy of Jackie Chan's Passepartout and deadpan comedic timing from Steve Coogan's Phineas Fogg. If the anachronisms and deviations from Verne's novel can be forgiven, Around The World In 80 Days is a creative globe-trotting adventure that doesn't get the respect it deserves.

There's simply no replicating the cheesy fun of the original Journey To The Center Of The Earth , an earnest science fiction adventure movie that wears its heart on its sleeve. The special effects are certainly dated, but it's hard not to wring a certain level of charm out of the delicately hand-painted backgrounds and practical lizardman costumes. Beyond the addition of the deliciously dastardly villain, Count Saknussemm, the film is also one of the most faithful to Verne's work, a commendable effort in and of itself.

The Mysterious Island

The Mysterious Island is one of Jules Verne's lesser-known stories, but the 1961 film of the same name takes every advantage of the novel's conceits. Following a group of Union soldiers in the Civil War who escape prison in a hot air balloon only to wash up on a bizarre uncharted island, the film's sense of tension only ever dials up, as the heroes contend with grimy human pirates and giant fauna rendered by the talent of stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen . Not the deepest narrative, this thrilling tale of danger holds up decades later remarkably well as a harrowing odyssey.

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

One of Disney's earliest forays into live-action storytelling, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea presented the aquatic crew of the Nautilus with untold dangers then-undreamed of by 50s audiences. Beyond the great creature and sci-fi technology designs that still hold up today, the film offers substantially more heart than most other Verne adaptations, taking the time to acclimate the viewer with its intrepid adventurers. It's no wonder that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was influential enough to earn a spot as a Disneyland mainstay even seven decades after its original release.

A Trip To The Moon

It's only fitting that the world's first science fiction movie sprung from the mind of one of the genre's most influential authors. Presenting early audiences with a dizzying idea of space travel long before the first astronaut was born, A Trip To The Moon 's hypnotic, almost feverish visuals and brisk 14-minute run time assaults the imagination with a yet-unmatched spectacle of dreamlike reality. From the Moon's incredulous face to the dancing insectoid aliens that vanish in a literal puff of smoke, A Trip To The Moon is by far the most influential science fiction film courtesy of Jules Verne.

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne - An Extraordinary Voyage into the Depths of the Unknown in this Classic Science Fiction Adventure

Descripción editorial.

Embark on a thrilling underwater journey with "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne, a timeless science fiction classic that has captivated readers for generations. This imaginative tale of exploration and adventure takes you deep into the uncharted world beneath the waves, as it follows the enigmatic Captain Nemo and his incredible submarine, the Nautilus. Join Professor Pierre Aronnax, his loyal assistant Conseil, and the skilled harpooner Ned Land as they are taken captive aboard the Nautilus and whisked away on a breathtaking journey beneath the oceans. Marvel at the astonishing discoveries and wonders they encounter, as they traverse the depths of the sea and uncover its many secrets. Through vivid descriptions and unforgettable characters, Verne weaves a captivating story that has inspired countless adaptations and sparked the imaginations of readers for over a century. "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" is an essential addition to any science fiction or classic literature collection, perfect for readers young and old alike. Experience the awe and wonder of this epic journey and let the Nautilus transport you to a world of mystery, discovery, and adventure. Don't miss the chance to own this groundbreaking tale of exploration and the marvels of the deep sea. Get your copy of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne today and dive into the extraordinary world that awaits beneath the waves!

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