Jules Verne Forum

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Obituary

From: Ian Thompson <ithompson~at~ges.gla.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 20:32:33 +0100
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~Gilead.org.il>

A further example to add to Andrew Nash's collection..this time from The Illustrated London News. This was a tabloid-sized weekly magazine which as the title suggests had at least 50% of its content in pictorial form. It proved immensely popular in the pre-television age and easily outsold the London Times. It targeted the middle and "upper" classes and gave prominence to the royal family, the Empire, military matters but also included review sections of literature, theatre etc. The Verne obituary did not feature in the literature section or even in the obituary list. It appeared close to the front of the April 1st issue under the banner "The World's News" ! The item also included a small portrait...the familiar one of Verne in his latter years facing right in profile and attributed to Herbert. The caption read "The late M Jules Verne. Father of Scientific Romance".
The obituary reads as follows.
"With Jules Verne died on March 24th the father of scientific romance. This prolific writer led boys into a new fairyland of adventure and at the same time insidiously taught them a great deal of natural science. There must be many who remember the thrill of that scene in "Hector Servadac" from which they learned how to weigh a heavenly body, and it is curious to read nowadays of the aerial experiments of Santos-Dumont and others in the light of one's early studies of Jules Verne's "Clipper of the Clouds" most plausible and satisfactory of airships. The submarine had, of course, its precursor in "Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea". Verne's popularity led to his works being translated into nearly every language. The novelist was born seventy eight years ago, and for many years he had lived a simple life in Amiens. He took himself more seriously as a writer than the purely literary qualities of his works deserved and he was grieved that he was never admitted to the Academy. It consoled him somewhat that he was the last to receive the Légion d'Honneur from Napoléon III."
Ian Thompson
Received on Sat 24 Jun 2006 - 22:30:02 IDT

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