Five Weeks in a Balloon

Jules Verne(1828-1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright who is credited as being one of the originators of literary science fiction. His Voyages extraordinaires series of novels include such classics as Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). Although he was often regarded derisively as a writer of genre fiction or children's literature, his influence extended to French avant-garde and surrealist circles, and to this day he is considered one of the finest writers of his generation and a key figure in world literature.