num_pages: 205
description: Around the World in Eighty Days was written during difficult times, both for France and for Verne. It was during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) in which Verne was conscripted as a coastguard, he was having money difficulties (his previous works were not paid royalties), his father had died recently, and he had witnessed a public execution which had disturbed him. However despite all this, Verne was excited about his work on the new book, the idea of which came to him one afternoon in a Paris café while reading a newspaper. The technological innovations of the 19th century had opened the possibility of rapid circumnavigation and the prospect fascinated Verne and his readership. In particular three technological breakthroughs occurred in 1869-70 that made a tourist-like around-the-world journey possible for the first the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in America (1869), the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). It was another notable mark in the end of an age of exploration and the start of an age of fully global tourism that could be enjoyed in relative comfort and safety. It sparked the imagination that anyone could sit down, draw up a schedule, buy tickets and travel around the world, a feat previously reserved for only the most heroic and hardy of adventurers. Although a journey by hot air balloon has become one of the images most strongly associated with the story, this iconic symbol was never deployed in the book by Verne himself , but dismissed, it "would have been highly risky and, in any case, impossible."
language: English
title: Around the World in 80 Days
titlecomplete: Around the World in 80 Days
characters: Phileas Fogg, Fix, Jean Passepartout, Aouda
genres: 19th Century, French Literature, France, Science Fiction, Classic Literature, Travel, Audiobook, Literature, Fantasy, Novels
ratings_count: 245169
places: Calcutta, New York (State), England, Liverpool, England, London, England, Singapore, Yokohama, San Francisco Bay, California, South Asia, India, United Kingdom, Suez Canal, Atlantic Ocean, Hong Kong, Bombay
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Audie Award
category: Classic
publisher: The Reader's Digest Association