Verne
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Verne. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
vern, Jules (1828-1905), a French novelist. He was born at Nantes, February 8, 1828. He died at Amiens, March 24, 1905. He was educated for the law, but turned his attention to writing. He originated a new style of novel. Each story deals with a scientific invention which he surrounds with a wealth of imagination and adventure. His first story of this sort, Five Weeks in a Balloon, appeared in 1863. Others are Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Mysterious Island, A Trip to the Moon, A Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Purchase of the North Pole , etc. They have been translated widely into nearly all modern languages. Boys delight in Verne's stories. Learned men have found fault because they do not deal with scientific facts. Several of the creations of his imagination, however, as the submarine boat , the automobile, and the dirigible balloon, have been realized. Publishers usually compensate authors by paying what is known as a royalty, a percentage or share of the receipts arising from the sale of the books. Verne, however, wrote for forty years on a salary of 20,000 francs, about $4,000 a year. By the terms of his contract, he wrote a story each six months. He was so modest that his immediate neighbors in the town of Amiens did not know that he was a man of world-wide reputation. They, however, made him an alderman of his ward, and regarded him with the kindliest affection.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JULES, a French novelist; born in Nantes, France, Feb. 8, 1828. He studied law for some time, but afterward began writing short pieces for the stage. In 1863 he published "Five Weeks in a Balloon," and the vein of the marvelous, tinged with a quasi-scientific truthfulness, was worked by him with great success. His more popular works are: "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," "From the Earth to the Moon," JULES VERNE "Across Africa in a Balloon," "Michel Strogoff," "To the Center of the Earth," "Round the World in Eighty Days," "The Mysterious Island," etc. Most of his works have been translated. He died at Amiens, March 23, 1905.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's in 1910 noted that "boys delight in Verne's stories" while "learned men have found fault," and that a few of his imaginings — the submarine, the automobile, the dirigible — had come true; Apollo 11 later added another, launching three men moonward from Florida and returning them to a Pacific splashdown much as "From the Earth to the Moon" (1865) had described. Verne is no longer filed as a writer for boys: since the 1960s scholars have treated him as a major French novelist, and the slapdash Victorian English translations both entries praise as "translated widely" have been replaced by faithful modern ones that restore text earlier translators cut or garbled. A lost novel, "Paris in the Twentieth Century," written in 1863 and rejected by his publisher, was found in a family safe and finally published in 1994. UNESCO's translation index now ranks him among the most translated authors on earth; Collier's 1921 date of death, March 23, is a day early — he died March 24, 1905.
Written for this edition, 2026.