Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography

William Butcher is probably the world's foremost scholarly authority on the life and literature of the French writer Jules Verne. Having written numerous articles and monographs on the life and literary output of the prodigious and often under-estimated and misunderstood French novelist, over many years, and having retranslated some of the best-known Verne novels such as 'Around the world in eighty days' in the last ten years or so, few are more qualified than Butcher to produce this detailed insight into Verne's life. Butcher systematically demolishes the many misperceptions of Verne's life and of the quality of his writings. He corrects the errors of previous biographies and of previous truncated and erroneous translations of Verne's novels, and brings to light some hitherto undetected subtexts in Verne's works, notably the degree of sexual allusion and the ingenious narrative structures. Butcher highlights the way in which Verne's lifetime publisher, Hetzel, expurgated many of Verne's works prior to publication, thus denaturing, tragically, much of their literary worth: to remedy this situation somewhat, Butcher's scholarship is unique in having gone back to the original manuscripts in order to reveal the unpublished, true genius of Jules Verne's themes and in order to reinterpret his novels. Butcher's meticulous research brings the reader right into the intimate spaces inhabited by Verne from childhood through to old age, and though his style is rigorously academic, he sometimes recounts episodes and physical surroundings in an almost novelistic fashion. This makes the reader's vantage point, as a fly on the wall observer of Verne's journeys through life, particularly close, realistic, intimate and fascinating. What has most struck me about this biography is the seemingly bittersweet nature of Verne's life, in which his success and happiness was at all times tempered with sadness, disappointment and even tragedy. The iconic French novelist is revealed, by Butcher, in all his humanity: this biography brings Verne to life with extraordinary vividness and Butcher's knowledge and writing skills help us to empathise with Verne and to admire him. As I am currently doing doctoral research on translations of Verne, this biography is proving to be an indispensable reference. In sum, I wholeheartedly recommend this text to a wide audience of readers, not merely scholars of Verne, but to anyone and everyone who has ever enjoyed Verne's works and wants to learn about the man behind the iconic novels and films. Butcher deservedly subtitles this tome the 'Definitive Biography'.

"One of the best storytellers that ever lived" is how Jules Verne is described by Arthur C. Clarke, no mean storyteller himself. He's right, although that will surprise anyone who knows Verne only by way of the rotten translations that have flooded the American and British markets in the past. Mercifully, the situation is changing. Clarke's statement is a truism to readers who know any of the fine recent English renderings, e.g. those by William Butcher, Stanley Kravitz, Walter James Miller, Frederick Walter, or Jordan Stump, or those edited by Arthur Evans. But with the publication of this biography, still more surprises emerge. It seems that Verne himself and the life he led are in many spots just about as gripping as his stories are. Indeed, it is almost incredible that we didn't know that until recently. Why the hell not? Well, folks, it's like this: until recently, there was precious little way for the English-reading world to appreciate Verne, because most of the translations of his novels were so bad (often truncating the texts, changing the names of characters, censoring political content, and just plain mistranslating), and most of the biographical material on their author was so formulaic and just plain dull, that it has been simply impossible for Brits and Yanks to take him seriously on the basis of what was available. But to repeat myself, the newer translations and Butcher's biography are the hopeful beginning of a new era. Verne emerges from Butcher's biography as a person with hangups, to say the least: an abused child, a man uncertain about his sexuality (bisexual, it seems on the evidence), a seriously depressed ultra-loner, a talented liar and plagiarist, a right-wing anti-semitic extremist who nevertheless harbored anarchist and communist sympathies, the father of a very talented writer whom he imprisoned as insane, and a doting uncle whose favorite nephew tried to murder him. On the other hand, we also have in Verne a man who was as skilful at celebrating the human appetite for adventure, achievement, experimentation and discovery as any writer in any age, and who could write classics in conditions that one would expect to immobilize him with sadness. And perhaps his most awesome achievement was to produce his greatest works under the scrutiny of a clueless editor (his name was Jules Hetzel) who repeatedly forced him to make gratuitious changes in his writings, changes which often warped his plots and absurdly forced his heroes and villains to act out of character. By the same token, Butcher's greatest achievement has been his exhaustive study of the original manuscripts, so that he has been able to show Verne's intentions independently of their censorship by Hetzel. The result will delight and astound, for Verne's conceptions are almost universally superior to the crap imposed on him by his publisher. As in any scholarly work, one can nitpick. A reviewer elsewhere does not scruple to mention Butcher's error on p. 188