Read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Online
Authors: Jules Verne
1828 | Jules Gabriel Verne is born in the port city of Nantes, France, the first of the five children who will be born to Pierre and Sophie Allotte Verne. His father, an attorney, will encourage young Jules to pursue a career in law. His mother, from a ship-building family, instills in him a love of the sea. |
1831 | Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) is published. |
1833 | George Sand’s novel Lélia is published by the well-known publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who later will publish Verne’s novels. |
1834 | Jules begins attending secondary school. During his years at school, he excels in geology, Latin, and Greek. Also greatly interested in machinery, he makes frequent visits to nearby factories. |
1839 | It is said that the adventurous boy tries to run away to sea aboard a ship bound for the West Indies but is apprehended by his father before reaching open waters. |
1843 | Tahiti becomes a French protectorate. |
1844 | Alexandre Dumas’s Le Comte de Monte Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo) is published. |
1847 | Jules begins studying law in Paris; he will receive his degree in two years. In Paris, family friends introduce him to some of France’s most distinguished writers, including Victor Hugo. Jules begins writing to supplement his meager allowance. Several of his plays are well received in theaters; his fiction appears in the Parisian magazine Musée des familles. |
1852 | Louis- Napoléon becomes emperor of France as Napoleon III. Novelists Alexandre Dumas (pére and fils) secure Verne a position as secretary of the Theatre lyrique. |
1853 | French administrator Georges-Eugène Haussmann begins alterations and municipal improvements in Paris, including the construction of the wide boulevards that distinguish the city to this day. The Crimean War begins, pitting Russia against France, England, and the Ottoman Turks. |
1854 | French poet Charles Baudelaire’s translation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe captivates Verne and initiates his lifelong admiration of the American author. |
1857 | Verne marries the widow Honorine de Viane Morel, whom he had met the previous year. Quitting his position at the Theatre lyrique, he embarks on a career as a stockbroker at Eggly and Company, although he continues to devote his mornings to writing. Charles Baudelaire’s volume of poems Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) and Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary are published. |
1859 | Verne spends hours in the library gaining the scientific knowledge that will inform his fiction. He travels to England and Scotland. English naturalist Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection is published. Work begins on the Suez Canal. |
1861 | Verne travels to Norway and Denmark. His son and only child, Michel, is born. He meets the legendary photographer Nadar. |
1862 | Verne’s manuscript Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon) is accepted by Hetzel for publication. Until his death, Verne will publish an average of two books a year with Hetzel, forming the cumulative series known as Voyages ex- traordinaires (Extraordinary Voyages). Hugo’s Les Misérables appears. |
1863 | Five Weeks in a Balloon is published to great success. |
1864 | Voyage au centre de la Terre (Voyage to the Center of the Earth) is published. Verne writes an article on Poe for Musée des familles. |
1865 | De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon) appears. English writer Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is published. |
1866 | Voyages et aventures du capitaine Hatteras (The Adventures of Captain Hatteras) is published. |
1867 | Verne travels with his brother Paul to New York aboard the Great Eastern. Les enfants du capitaine Grant (The Children of captain Grant) is published. |
1868 | Captain published. He purchases his first yacht, the Saint-Michel, named for his only son |
1869 | Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) is published in two volumes (1869-1870). Its depiction of the submarine Nautilus (named after the first submarine, invented around 1800 by American engineer Robert Fulton) predates the construction of the first submarine by twenty-five years. |
1870 | The Franco-Prussian War breaks out; Verne serves in the Coast Guard. |
1871 | Une ville flottante (A Floating City), partly inspired by a trip to Niagara Falls, New York, is published. Verne’s father dies. The Franco-Prussian War ends. |
1872 | The Verne family moves to Amiens, where Verne will reside the rest of his life. |
1873 | Another Verne masterpiece, Le tour du monde en quatre vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days), is published. French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s confessional autobiography Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell) is published. |
1874 | Le Docteur Ox (Dr. Ox’s Experiment and Other Stories) appears, along with L‘Île mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island). Around the World in Eighty Days is adapted for the stage. Verne purchases a new yacht, the Saint-Michel II. |
1875 | Le Chancellor (The Chancellor) is published. |
1876 | Michel Strogoff is published. |
1877 | Les Indes noires (The Child of the Cavern) and Hector Servadac are published. Verne buys his last yacht, the Saint-Michel III. |
1878 | A leisurely cruise aboard the Saint-Michel III takes Verne and his brother to North Africa, Portugal, and Gibraltar. |
1879 | Les Cinq cents millions de la Bégum (The Begum’s Fortune) and Les tribulations d’un Chinois en Chine (The Tribulations of a Chinaman in China) are published. |
1880 | Verne cruises to Scotland and Ireland. La Maison a vapeur (The Steam House) is published. |
1881 | Verne cruises to Holland, Denmark, and Germany. La Jan-gada (The Giant Raft) is published. |
1882 | Verne moves his family to a larger house in Amiens with a circular tower; today it is a well-known Verne landmark and the headquarters of the Jules Verne Society in Amiens. |
1883 | Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island is published. War in Indochina breaks out. |
1884 | Verne voyages to Italy, where Pope Leo XIII personally blesses his work. |
1885 | Victor Hugo dies. English novelist Henry Rider Haggard publishes King Solomon’s Mines. |
1886 | Verne’s deranged nephew, Gaston, shoots him in the leg, laming him for life. This personal disaster, and his growing cynicism about industrialization, marks a turn toward pessimism in Verne’s outlook and writing. His longtime publisher, Hetzel, dies. Verne sells the Saint-Michel III because of financial concerns. Robert Louis Stevenson publishes Dr. jekyll and Mr. Hyde. |
1887 | Verne’s mother dies. |
1888 | Verne is elected to the municipal council of Amiens, where he will serve for fifteen years. |
1889 | Sans dessus dessous (Topsy-Turvy) appears, which contains notably negative views on the potential of technology. His later novels will take on various forms of social injustice, from the plight of orphans to the corrupting power of missionaries in foreign lands. |
1895 | English novelist H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine is published. |
1897 | Le Sphinx des glaces (The Ice Sphinx), written as a sequel to Poe’s 1838 novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, is published. Flagging health plagues Verne. His brother Paul dies. English writer Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous and Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac are published. |
1899 | Verne’s Le testament d‘un excentrique (The Will of an Eccentric) deals with the oil industry’s ravages of the environment. |
1905 | Leaving a drawer filled with manuscripts, and with his fam- ily gathered at his bedside, Jules Verne dies of complications from diabetes. He is buried in Madeleine Cemetery in Amiens. His posthumously published novels, altered considerably by his son, Michel, remain a source of scholarly debate and interest. |