Reverend Lewis Page Mercier (9 January 1820 – 2 November 1875) is known today as the translator, along with Eleanor Elizabeth King, of three of the best-known novels of Jules Verne: Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas, From the Earth to the Moon, and Around the Moon. To avoid a conflict of interest with his position as chaplain, Mercier wrote under the pen names of Louis Mercier, MA (Oxon) and Mercier Lewis. Chronology Born on 9 January 1820 (christened 7 February 1820, Old Church, Saint Pancras, London,) the only son of Francis Michael Jacob Mercier, Lewis Page Mercier came of French Huguenot stock; his grandfather was pastor of the French Protestant church in Threadneedle Street, London. As a child he almost certainly spoke a species of French at home, a possible qualification for his later translations of Verne. The family was located in the London Borough of Hackney, home of the original silk industry of French mercers (). In 1837 Mercier entered Trinity College, Oxford, where he was the College Latin Essayist. In 1839 he received an open scholarship from the University. He received a Third in "Greats" (Greek and Latin) receiving his B.A. on 25 June 1841, and obtained a post-graduate bursary at University College, Oxford, the "Browne Exhibition", established by one Browne in 1587. Forgoing an academic but at the time necessarily celibate career, he gave up his exhibition to marry Anna Marie Hovell in 1842. He became a deacon in 1843 and a presbyter in 1845. In 1855 he was awarded his M.A. degree from University College. His first posting was to Glasgow where he was Assistant Minister of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Chapel, 2nd master of the Glasgow College School, and Chaplain to the Garrison. While in Glasgow he was admitted to membership in the Glasgow Philosophical Society (15 November 1843). From Glasgow he moved on to be 2nd Master at a new school in Edgbaston, near Birmingham (1846). and headmaster (1849). In 1857 he moved back to Hackney, becoming headmaster at the St. John’s Foundation School and Assistant Reader at the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital in nearby Brunswick Square. In 1861 we find him living at the school at age 41, head of a family of 9 children (ages 1,2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 14, 15), numerous servants and 25 pupils. Relieved of his position by the Governing Board in 1861, he then became