Jules Gabriel Verne (1828–1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright who became one of the world's most celebrated adventure writers. His literary career was profoundly shaped by his collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Together, they produced the Voyages extraordinaires, a highly successful series of adventure novels that integrated the rapid scientific and technological advancements of the late 19th century into their narratives.
Verne's most famous works, including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872), captured the imagination of readers worldwide. Beyond his iconic novels, Verne was a prolific writer who composed plays, short stories, poetry, songs, and various academic studies. His stories frequently explored the boundaries of contemporary scientific knowledge, earning him a reputation as one of the "fathers of science fiction."
While Verne enjoyed immense popularity and exerted a strong influence on the European literary avant-garde and surrealist movements, his reception in the Anglosphere was historically more complicated. Due to heavily abridged and altered English translations, he was long dismissed in English-speaking countries as a writer of children's literature or genre fiction. However, his literary standing has undergone a significant critical rehabilitation since the 1980s. Today, Verne remains the second most-translated author in the world, trailing only Agatha Christie.
