The New International Encyclopædia/Verne, Jules

VERNE, vârn, Jules (1828-1905). A French novelist. He was born at Nantes February 8, 1828, studied law, attempted the stage in 1850 with a comedy in verse, Les pailles rompues, and only after repeated dramatic failures struck, in 1863, with his Cinq semaines en ballon, a rich but not unexplored vein of scientific adventure. Of his very numerous works, most of which are available in fair translations, the more readable are Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870); The Mysterious Island (1870); Around the World in Eighty Days (1872); Michael Strogoff (1876); The Green Ray (1882); Christopher Columbus (1883); The Southern Star (1884); The Carpathian Château (1892). Several of his tales have been dramatized, and Le docteur Ox (1874) has been turned into an opera. The interest of his stories depends solely on incident; character drawing there is none.