Guide Note:
In his classic adventure novel Around the World in Eighty Days, French writer Jules Verne (1828-1905) describes how the English gentleman Phileas Fogg and his French valet Passepartout attempt to travel around the world in 80 days on a £20,000 wager set by Fogg’s friends at the Reform Club.
Despite the tight schedule Fogg and Passepartout have to adhere to, they manage to get involved into various adventures during their travels. The two save a young widow in India from being burned in a sati; Fogg is arrested on false bank robbery charges; the train they travel on from San Francisco to New York is attacked by Native Americans, and so on. Fast moving and full of suspense, this, one of Verne’s most popular works, is also a memorable portrait of the British Empire at the time when it was so vast that "the sun never set on it".
Fast Facts:
- Originally published serially
- Since the dates of the serial corresponded to the dates mentioned in the novel, many readers believed Verne documented an actual journey
- First published in book form in 1873
- Setting: The story opens in London in 1872, and continues to cover Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco and New York
- The wager of £20,000 Fogg accepted would be worth about £2,500,000 today
- Passpartout is French for "access to everywhere"
- Adapted many times for film and TV
- The journey in hot air balloon did not actually feature in the book
- Quotation: "If to live in this style is to be eccentric, it must be confessed that there is something good in eccentricity."
