Master Zacharius, or the clockmaker who lost his soul is an 1854 short story by Jules Verne. The story, an intensely Romantic fantasy echoing the works of E. T. A. Hoffmann, is a Faustian tragedy about an inventor whose overpowering pride leads to his downfall.

Jules Gabriel Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including 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, always well documented, are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time.