Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography

Herbert R. Lottman's biography of Jules Verne dwells on the sources of the pioneering author's creative impulses, drawing a portrait of a complicated man, driven by an insatiable wanderlust that led him to uproot his staid life in Paris, to move to the hinterlands where he recreated himself as a writer of captivating stories of science fiction, a genre he virtually created. Drawing from Verne's previously unpublished correspondence, Lottman provides revealing details about Verne's life, his worries for his troubled son Michel, and the relationship with his domineering publisher and editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel, all of which provides new insight into Verne and his written work. Perhaps most fascinating is the close relationship between the success of Verne's work and the innovative marketing of his novels by Hetzel, showing that Verne was not only creating new genres, but also blazing trails as a literary media star.