Jules Gabriel Verne (8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a distinguished French novelist, poet, and playwright. Renowned for his collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, this partnership gave birth to the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels which include Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels, thoroughly researched, predominantly unfold in the latter half of the 19th century, embracing the technological advancements of that era.

Aside from his iconic novels, Verne's literary repertoire expanded to encompass numerous plays, short stories, autobiographical pieces, poetry, songs, and an array of scientific, artistic, and literary studies. His works have been adapted across a multitude of mediums - from film and television to comic books, theater, opera, music, and video games.

Verne is venerated as an influential author in France and throughout much of Europe, where he has significantly impacted the literary avant-garde and surrealism. Despite often being categorized as a writer of genre fiction or children's books in the Anglosphere due to heavily abridged and altered translations, since the 1980s, his literary reputation has seen a notable improvement.

Regarded as the second most-translated author globally since 1979, trailing only behind Agatha Christie and ahead of William Shakespeare, Verne is occasionally hailed as the "father of science fiction," a title he shares with H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback. In the 2010s, he emerged as the most translated French author in the world, and 2005 was celebrated as "Jules Verne Year" in France to commemorate the centenary of his death.