Jules Verne Court: The successful French novelist may have been the first to expose "Tampa town' in popular fiction.
By MICHAEL CANNING
Published June 11, 2004
Back in 1894, wealthy socialite Emelia Chapin knew that Jules Verne should have a tribute in Tampa. So she named a park she created in Ballast Point after the famous French novelist.
Today, Verne is still memorialized here but only in the form of Jules Verne Court. The small residential street is a few blocks from the park, which was renamed Ballast Point Park after Chapin sold the property in 1903.
Chapin, who lived in a Bayshore Boulevard estate, wanted Verne part of Tampa's vernacular because he was likely the first person to give the city its first exposure in the world of popular fiction.
In his 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon, he made "Tampa town" the launch site of man's first flight to the Moon. A true pioneer of science fiction, Verne infused much of his fictional work with scientific hypothesis. Consider that a century later flights to the moon actually originated only about 100 miles from Verne's site at Cape Canaveral.
In Paris in the 20th Century, his second novel, penned in 1863, he foretold of a worldwide communications network, gas-powered automobiles, glass skyscrapers, high-speed trains and calculators. In other works, Verne predicted the invention and uses of airplanes, television, submarines, guided missiles and satellites.
Verne was born in 1828 in Nantes, France. As a youth, he exhibited a voracious imagination and curiosity about the world. He once stowed away on a ship bound for Asia, only to find his father waiting for him at the next port.
Verne went to Paris to study law, but the city only stoked his imagination and urge to write. When his father, himself a wealthy lawyer, discovered his son was spending time writing travel stories and librettos for the Paris theater, he cut off young Verne's money.
Verne took up stockbroking and, for his writing, sought the advice of famous authors Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas. After several rewrites, Verne published his first novel in 1863. Five Weeks in a Balloon, a story about balloon exploration of Africa, was an instant success and made Verne famous.
For the next quarter century, Verne remained highly prolific. Among his most successful works were Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1869), and Around the World in Eighty Days, first published in 1872.
Stricken with diabetes, Verne died in 1905 at age 77.
- Source: Times files, Tampa Bay History Center and World Book Encyclopedia.
