Jules Verne

Jules Verne was born on 8 February 1828 on Île Feydeau, then a small artificial island on the Loire in Nantes, and died in Amiens in 1905. His mother came from a Nantes family of navigators and shipowners, and the river and its merchant ships fascinated him as a boy. His father, a lawyer, expected him to take over the family practice, and sent him to Paris in 1847 to study law. Verne, however, was already writing verse tragedies and long works in the style of Victor Hugo.

Working with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, he created the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels that includes Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Around the World in Eighty Days and The Mysterious Island. They are set mostly in the second half of the 19th century and draw on the science and technology of the day. Verne also wrote plays, poetry and short stories. He is among the most translated authors in the world and is often called a father of science fiction.

Reading Jules Verne to learn French

Verne wrote in the nineteenth century, so his French is a little formal and old-fashioned in places, and his novels weave contemporary science into their adventures. Expect some technical and scientific vocabulary alongside the storytelling, which can slow you down at first. The English translation beside the text on Paralelo, aligned phrase by phrase, helps you through those passages. Paralelo offers Voyage au Centre de la Terre, which takes about 304 minutes to read, so it is the natural place to start. Its journey keeps you moving, and the story pulls you along even when a word is unfamiliar.'