Jules Verne
French novelist whose books Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and Around the World in Eighty Days turned the science of his time into adventure Show bio
Bio
Jules Verne heard a teacher insist her missing husband would return like Robinson Crusoe. He lost the young woman he loved when her parents married her to a rich landowner. Verne went on to write many young women married against their will into his novels.
He studied law in Paris as his father wished, but poured his passion into writing plays. Verne later teamed with a publisher on Voyages extraordinaires, adventure novels grounded in current science.
He ranks as the world's second most-translated author, just above William Shakespeare. Verne never let go of his teacher's castaway tale, which returns in many of his novels.