Who Supports Esperanto? Where Can I Learn It?

Problem
Has anybody well-known every supported Esperanto?

Answer
Yes.
Jules Verne.

Leo Tolstoy.
Soros.

Before Esperanto, other famous people were interested in artificial languages, as you will learn in Vienna, Austria at the Esperanto Museum and collection of artificial languages, part of the national library collection.

There are many more, but less is more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperantist#Lists_of_famous_Esperantists
https://web.archive.org/web/20160329001132/http://www.learnlangs.com/esperanto/resources
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esperantomuseum.jpg

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Jules Verne portrait

Jules Verne, aged about 50, according to his grandson. The photo taken by photographer Nadar, has since been restored. This comes from Wikipedia and is the in public domain in the USA because it was taken prior to 100 years after the subject's death. It is also in the public domain in other countries, in this case France.

See previous post for the places where you can see Jules Verne's house in Amiens, France, and statues in Spain.

Jules Verne was at first unlucky in love, mainly because when he was not progressing in his career he was not seen as a good catch. After initial moderate success as an author, he became a great success.

Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Follow Jules Verne, The Author, In France

 JULES VERNE
The name Jules Verne popped into my head when I was writing about a hot air balloon festival. The picture of a hot air balloon is on the cover of one of his books. I have remembered it since childhood.

Wikpedia says:

Jules Gabriel Verne (/dʒuːlz/^[1] /vɜːrn/;^[1][2] French: [ʒyl vɛʁn]; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright.

Verne was born in the seaport of Nantes, where he trained to follow father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit early in life to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).

Verne is considered a major literary author in France and Europe. His reputation is different in Anglophone regions, where he has often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children's books, largely because of the abridged and altered translations of his novels.^[4]

Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking between Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare.^[5] He has sometimes been called the "Father of Science Fiction". 

(Elsewhere I have seen The Bible or The Diary of Anne Frank listed first, but perhaps Jules Verne is second in the fiction category.)

Map of France. Amiens, capital of Picardy, is in the centre of the diamond sahp at the north of France, top centre of this map.

FRANCE
Jules Verne lived in Amiens, France, and wrote many of his books there. His museum is in the house where he lived in the city. The street has been renamed, Jules Verne. During his lifetime you could address the envelope of a letter simple with the words of his name Jules Verne and the letter would be sent to France, to his home city of Amiens and from there to his house.

Apart from being a world-famous writer, he was a busy organizer and benefactor of the town, building the Circus, whose exterior you can admire even if you have no time to see inside.

He is buried in the local cemetery. His grave is most dramatic, with a figure leaping out of the grave.
So, in France, three stop for the visitor to Verne trail stops, in person or on line travelling:

1 Verne house museum
Rue Jules Verne
Amiens
France

2 The Circus
Amiens
France

3 Jules Verne Grave
Cemetery
Amiens France

SPAIN
Travel from the north of France to the north of Spain. We have two cities with statues of Jules Verne, Vigo and Redondela.

Statue of Jules Verne looking out to sea at Redondela in Spain. Photo from Wikipedia.

Cinq Semaines En Ballon - Five weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne

Dramatic grave of Jules Verne in Amiens, France.

Jules Verne inspired the name of a modern travel company. Jules Verne Voyages.

https://www.vjv.com

USEFUL LINKS:

http://www.turismodevigo.org/en/monumento-julio-verne-monument-jules-verne (Vigo in Spain.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Verne

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.