Jules Verne Forum

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Verne biography by Herbert Lottman

From: <AEVANS~at~DEPAUW.EDU>
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 1996 13:16:25 -0500 (EST)
To: jvf~at~leeor.math.technion.ac.il

Dear friends,
In my previous message, I misspelled the Lottman's last name--it is with
only one "n"--and I didn't have the text in front of me at the time. I have
now retrieved it and can give you a bit more information about it.
  The dust jacket reads as follows: "Drawing on previously unpublished letters
and papers, Herbert R. Lottman reveals Jules Verne, the pioneer of the science
fiction genre and the uncannily accurate forecaster of twentieth-century
invention, in an entirely new light. In this groundbreaking biography, Lottman
explores the dark, private sides of the visionary author.
  In midlife, bored by the business world in which he seemed destined to
vegetate, driven by a desire to make his name as a writer, Jules Verne turned
his back on Parisian society and moved to the provinces. There, he crafted
some of the most imaginative and prescient tales of space, sea, and air travel
ever written--tales which many twentieth-century scientists have credited as
inspiration for their own work.
  Despite the positive effect Verne's extraordinary vision of the future has
had on modern inventors, it is clear that Jules Verne himself viewed the future
with a mixture of awe and dread. In his long-lost novel, PARIS IN THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY (published in France in 1994, and in the United States in
early 1997), Verne predicted a world filled with both technological achive-
ments and monstrosities; cars, fax machines, synthesizers, computers, mass
transit, and the electric chair. With uncharacteristic mistrust, Verne
simultaneously marveled at the inventions and despaired at what drove people
to create them. It is this elusive, disillusioned aspect of Verne that Herbert
Lottman captures here.
  Tracing Verne's life from his childhood in Nantes to his self-imposed exile
outside of Paris as an adult, Lottman sketches a vivid portrait of the man.
Lottman brings to light for the first time Verne's secret struggles with his
constant wanderlust, his unhappy marriage, his rebellious son, and his
overbearing editor-publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel. This is the most complete
picture to date of Jules Verne, his work, his hidden cynicism and dark
passions."

  The original French version of this biography was published in 1996 by
Flammarion. It contained 444 pages. This English translation contains a total
of 360 pages (although the print is quite small--so it may be exactly the
same in terms of content).

  There are voluminous endnotes: over 20 pages of them (in tiny print) covering
the 40 chapters of the text. But, at least in this advance uncorrected
proof, there is no index and there are no illustrations. This ISBN # is:
0-312-14636-1 and the dust cover indicates that it sells for $26.95 ($35.99
in Canada). It is a softcover book.

  I hope that this information is useful to you.

Best wishes,
Art Evans
Received on Sun 10 Nov 1996 - 20:16:35 IST

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