Jules Verne was born on the 8th of February 1828 in Nantes, France, to Pierre Verne and his wife Sophie. The early years of this life were spent with his parents, on a nearby island in the river Loire. This isolation helped strengthen his imagination, and allowed a strong bond to develop between Jules Verne and his younger brother Paul. When he was nine years of age, he and his brother were sent to boarding school in Nantes Lycee. There he studied Latin, and thereafter he went to Paris to study for the bar, in order to follow his father's footsteps as an attorney. Jules Verne started his writings around 1848, in the form of operettas. For some time his time was divided between work and theater, which finally revealed his true calling in life as a writer.
Jules Verne's father eventually discovered that his son was pursuing writing ambitions at the expense of his legal studies. This discovery led to the prompt withdrawal of fiduciary support, which forced Verne to support himself as a stockbroker. Also during this period he made the acquaintance of Honorine de Viane Morel, a widow, and mother of with two daughters. Verne and Morel were married on the 10th of January, 1857. The union brought him not only the companionship of a wife, but also her encouragement to continue writing actively and searching for an interested publisher.
Jules Verne's circumstances improved when he met Pierre-Jules Hetzel, an influential French publisher who also published Victor Hugo, George Sand, and Erckmann-Chatrian, among others. With Hetzel's knowledge and experience as his guide, Verne improved his writings, which until this point had been rejected more than a few times by other publishers. His first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was published in 1863.
On March 9, 1886, Verne was involved in a freak confrontation with his twenty-five-year-old nephew, who charged at him with a gun. During the brawl Verne was shot in the leg, something from which he would never fully recover. His nephew spent the rest of his life in an asylum.
In 1888, he entered politics and served for the next fifteen years. On the 24th of March, 1905, while suffering from diabetes, Jules Verne passed away at his home. He remains the most translated novelist in the world. According to the UNESCO statistics his novels have been translated into 148 languages.