Macmillan Collector’s Library: Around The World in Eighty Days

Jules Gabriel Verne was born in France in 1828 and was destined to follow his father into the legal profession. He trained for the bar in Paris but took more readily to literary life, befriending Dumas and Hugo, and making his living by writing librettos.

His first science-based novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was published in 1862 and made him famous. Verne went on to write dozens more such adventures, including Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). In later life, he entered local politics at Amiens, where he had a home, and also lived in Paris, in the street now named Boulevard Jules Verne. He died in 1905.