Cultural influence of Jules Verne

The pioneering submarine designer Simon Lake credited his inspiration to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas,[1] and his autobiography begins "Jules Verne was in a sense the director-general of my life.

"[2] William Beebe, Sir Ernest Shackleton, and Robert Ballard found similar early inspiration in the novel, and Jacques Cousteau called it his "shipboard bible".

[11] Another influential speleologist, Norbert Casteret, traced his love of "caverns, abysses and underground rivers" to his avid youthful reading of Journey to the Center of the Earth,[12] calling it "a marvelous book, which impressed and fascinated me more than any other", and adding "I sometimes re-read it still, each time finding anew the joys and enthusiasm of my childhood".

"[25] Jean Cocteau cited both Around the World in Eighty Days and Verne's own 1874 dramatization of it as major childhood influences, calling the novel a "masterpiece" and adding "Play and book alike not only thrilled our young imagination but, better than atlases and maps, whetted our appetite for adventure in far lands.

… Never for me will any real ocean have the glamour of that sheet of green canvas, heaved on the backs of the Châtelet stage-hands crawling like caterpillars beneath it, while Phileas and Passepartout from the dismantled hull watch the lights of Liverpool twinkling in the distance.

[19] Perec once commented: "When Jules Verne lists all the names of fish over four pages in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, I feel as though I am reading a poem.

"[29] The Swiss traveler and writer Nicolas Bouvier cited Verne as his initiation into geography, and named Mathias Sandorf and Phileas Fogg among his childhood heroes.

"[34] The English novelist Margaret Drabble was deeply influenced by Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas as a child and remains a fervent admirer of Verne.

[37] Other literary figures known to have been influenced by Verne include Paul Claudel, François Mauriac, Blaise Cendrars, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marcel Aymé, René Barjavel, Claude Roy, Michel Butor, and Roland Barthes.