AroundtheWorldinEightyDays

AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS JULES VERNE was born in 1828 in Nantes, then as now one of France’s most important ports. He developed from childhood a romantic fascination for the sea and ships. After a childhood and adolescence spent in his home town, Verne moved to Paris in 1848, ostensibly to complete his studies and become a lawyer like his father, but his real ambition was to be a writer. With this aim he frequented the Parisian literary salons of the period. Verne’s early works were written for the stage, but during the 1850s he also wrote short stories that were published in one of the most successful illustrated magazines of the time. Verne’s career as a novelist began in 1863, when the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel accepted for publication the manuscript of what was to become an instant popular success, Five Weeks in a Balloon. All Verne’s best-known and most successful works were published under his contract with Hetzel, who gave them the collective title of ‘Extraordinary Journeys into the Known and Unknown Worlds’. These works include Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the S......