Jules Verne was born in 1828, in Nantes, France. In 1847 he studied Law in Paris, but this was not his main passion in life. He enjoyed writing more than anything, and his first play was published in 1850. He was Scottish on his mother's side and developed a profound interest in Scotland. Also a keen geographer, he spent many hours in Paris libraries studying engineering and astronomy researching his first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, which was published in 1863. A year later he published one of his most famous novels, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was published in 1873. He wrote prolifically through the rest of his life (54 novels) and died in 1905.