Around the World in Eighty Days

Around the World in Eighty Days (French: Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours) is an adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in French in 1872. In the story, Phileas Fogg of London and his newly employed French valet Passepartout attempt to circumnavigate the world in 80 days on a wager of £20,000 (equivalent to £2.3 million in 2023) set by his friends at the Reform Club. It is one of Verne's most acclaimed works.
Phileas Fogg is a wealthy English gentleman living a solitary life in London. Despite his wealth, Fogg lives modestly and carries out his habits with mathematical precision. He is a member of the Reform Club, where he spends a large portion of his days and nights. On the morning of 2 October 1872, having dismissed his valet for bringing him shaving water at a temperature slightly lower than expected, Fogg hires Frenchman Jean Passepartout as a replacement.
That evening, while at the Club, Fogg gets involved in an argument over an article in The Morning Chronicle (or The Daily Telegraph in some editions) stating that with the opening of a new railway section in India, it is now possible to travel around the world in 80 days. He accepts a wager for £20,000, half of his fortune, from his fellow club members to complete such a journey within this period. With Passepartout accompanying him, Fogg departs from London by train at 8:45 p.m.; to win the wager, he must return to the club by this same time on 21 December, 80 days later. They take Fogg's remaining £20,000 with them to cover expenses during the journey.
Fogg and Passepartout reach Suez on time. While disembarking in Egypt, they are watched by a Scotland Yard policeman, Detective Fix, who has been dispatched from London in search of James Strand, a bank robber. Since Fogg fits the vague description Scotland Yard was given of Strand, Detective Fix mistakes Fogg for the criminal. Since he cannot secure a warrant in time, Fix boards the steamer (the Mongolia) conveying the travellers to Bombay. Fix becomes acquainted with Passepartout without revealing his purpose. Fogg promises the steamer engineer a large reward if he gets them to Bombay early. They arrive in Bombay on 20 October, two days ahead of schedule, and board a train heading towards Calcutta that evening.
The early arrival in Bombay proves beneficial for Fogg and Passepartout, as contrary to what the newspaper article had said, an 80 km (50 mi) stretch of track from Kholby to Allahabad has not yet been built. Fogg purchases an elephant, hires a guide and starts toward Allahabad.
They come across a procession in which a young Indian woman, Aouda, is to undergo sati. Since she is drugged with opium and hashish and is not going voluntarily, the travellers decide to rescue her. They follow the procession to the site, where Passepartout takes the place of her deceased husband on the funeral pyre. He rises from the pyre during the ceremony, scaring off the priests and carries Aouda away. The two days gained earlier are lost but Fogg shows no regret.
Fogg and Passepartout re-board the train at Allahabad, taking Aouda with them. When the travelers arrive in Calcutta, Fix, who had arrived ahead of them, has Fogg and Passepartout arrested for a crime Passepartout had committed in Bombay. They jump bail and board a steamer (the Rangoon) going to Hong Kong, with a day's stopover in Singapore. Fix also boards the Rangoon; he shows himself to Passepartout, who is delighted to again meet his friend from the earlier voyage.
In Hong Kong, the group learns Aouda's distant relative, in whose care they had been planning to leave her, has moved to Holland, so they decide to take her with them to Europe. Still without a warrant, Fix sees Hong Kong as his last chance to arrest Fogg on British soil. Passepartout becomes convinced that Fix is a spy from the Reform Club. Fix confides in Passepartout, who does not believe a word and remains convinced that his master is not a robber. To prevent Passepartout from informing his master about the premature departure of their next vessel, the Carnatic, Fix gets Passepartout drunk and drugs him in an opium den. Passepartout still manages to catch the steamer to Yokohama but cannot inform Fogg that the steamer is leaving the evening before its scheduled departure date.
Fogg discovers he missed his connection. He searches for a vessel that will take him to Yokohama, finding a pilot boat, the Tankadere, that takes him, Aouda, and Fix to Shanghai, where they catch a steamer to Yokohama. There, they search for Passepartout, believing he arrived on the Carnatic as initially planned. They find him in a circus, trying to earn the fare for his homeward journey. Reunited, the four board a paddle-steamer, the General Grant, taking them across the Pacific to San Francisco. Fix promises Passepartout that now, having left British soil, he will no longer try to delay Fogg's journey but instead support him in getting back to Britain, where he can arrest him.
In San Francisco, they board a transcontinental train to New York City, encountering several obstacles along the way: a herd of bison crossing the tracks, a failing suspension bridge and a band of Sioux warriors ambushing the train. After uncoupling the locomotive from the carriages, Passepartout is kidnapped by the warriors. Fogg rescues him after American soldiers volunteer to help. They continue by a wind-powered sled to Omaha and then get a train to New York.
In New York, having missed the ship China, Fogg looks for alternative transport. He finds a steamboat, Henrietta, destined for Bordeaux, France. The captain of the boat refuses to take them to Liverpool, whereupon Fogg consents to be taken to Bordeaux for $2,000 per passenger. He then bribes the crew to mutiny and makes course for Liverpool. Against hurricane winds and going on full steam, the boat runs out of fuel after a few days. When the coal runs out, Fogg buys the boat from the captain, then has the crew burn all the wooden parts to keep up the steam.
The companions arrive at Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland, take the train to Dublin and then a ferry to Liverpool, still in time to reach London before the deadline. Once on English soil, Fix arrests Fogg. A short time later, the misunderstanding is cleared up – the actual robber had been caught three days earlier in Edinburgh. As a result of the delay, Fogg misses the scheduled train to London; he orders a special train and arrives in London apparently five minutes late, certain he has lost the wager.
The following day Fogg apologises to Aouda for bringing her with him since he now has to live in poverty and cannot support her. Aouda confesses that she loves him and asks him to marry her. As Passepartout notifies a minister, he learns that he is mistaken in the date – it is not 22 December, but instead 21 December. Because the party had travelled eastward, their days were shortened by four minutes for every degree of longitude they crossed; thus, although they had experienced the same amount of time abroad as people had experienced in London, they had seen 80 sunrises and sunsets while London had seen only 79. Passepartout informs Fogg of his mistake and Fogg hurries to the Club just in time to meet his deadline and win the wager. Having spent almost £19,000 of his travel money during the journey, he divides the remainder between Passepartout and Fix and marries Aouda.
Around the World in Eighty Days was written during difficult times, both for France and Verne. It was during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) in which Verne was conscripted as a coastguard; he was having financial difficulties (his previous works were not paid royalties); his father had died recently; and he had witnessed a public execution, which disturbed him.
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 1869–1870 that made a tourist-like around-the-world journey possible for the first time: the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in America (1869), the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), and the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870). It was another notable mark at 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.
The story began serialization in Le Temps on 6 November 1872. The story was published in installments over the next 45 days, with its ending timed to synchronize Fogg's December 21 deadline with the real world. Chapter XXXV appeared on 20 December; 21 December, the date upon which Fogg was due to appear back in London, did not include an installment of the story; on 22 December, the final two chapters announced Fogg's success. As it was being published serially for the first time, some readers believed that the journey was actually taking place – bets were placed, and some railway companies and ship liner companies lobbied Verne to appear in the book. It is unknown if Verne submitted to their requests, but the descriptions of some rail and shipping lines leave some suspicion he was influenced.
Concerning the final coup de théâtre, Fogg had thought it was one day later than it actually was because he had forgotten that during his journey, he had added a full day to his clock, at the rate of an hour per 15° of longitude crossed. At the time of publication and until 1884, a de jure International Date Line did not exist. If it did, he would have been made aware of the change in date once he reached this line. Thus, the day he added to his clock throughout his journey would be removed upon crossing this imaginary line. However, Fogg's mistake would not have been likely to occur in the real world because a de facto date line did exist. The UK, India, and the US had the same calendar with different local times. When he arrived in San Francisco, he would have noticed that the local date was one day earlier than shown in his travel diary. Consequently, it is unlikely he would fail to notice that the departure dates of the transcontinental train in San Francisco and of the China steamer in New York were one day earlier than his travel diary. He would also somehow have to avoid looking at any newspapers. Additionally, in Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet?, John Sutherland points out that Fogg and company would have to be "deaf, dumb and blind" not to notice how busy the streets were on an apparent "Sunday", with the Sunday Observance Act 1780 still in effect.
Following publication in 1873, various people attempted to follow Fogg's fictional circumnavigation, often within self-imposed constraints:
The idea of a trip around the world within a set period had clear external origins. It was popular before Verne published his book in 1873. Even the title Around the World in Eighty Days is not original. Several sources have been hypothesized as the origins of the story.
Another early reference comes from the Italian traveler Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri. He wrote a book in 1699 that was translated into French: Voyage around the World or Voyage du Tour du Monde (1719, Paris).
Around the World by Steam, via Pacific Railway, was published in 1871 by the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and an Around the World in A Hundred and Twenty Days by Edmond Planchut. In early 1870, the Erie Railway Company published a statement of routes, times, and distances detailing a trip around the globe of 38,204 km (23,739 mi) in 77 days and 21 hours.
American William Perry Fogg traveled the world, describing his tour in a series of letters to The Cleveland Leader newspaper, entitled, Round the World: Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (1872).
In 1872, Thomas Cook organised the first around-the-world tourist trip, leaving on 20 September 1872 and returning seven months later. The journey was described in a series of letters published in 1873 as Letter from the Sea and from Foreign Lands, Descriptive of a tour Round the World. Scholars have pointed out similarities between Verne's account and Cook's letters. However, some argue that Cook's trip happened too late to influence Verne. According to a second-hand 1898 account, Verne refers to a Cook advertisement as a source for the idea of his book. In interviews in 1894 and 1904, Verne says the source was "through reading one day in a Paris cafe" and "due merely to a tourist advertisement seen by chance in the columns of a newspaper." Around the World itself says the origins were a newspaper article. All of these point to Cook's advert as being a probable spark for the idea of the book.
The periodical Le Tour du monde (3 October 1869) contained a short piece titled "Around the World in Eighty Days", which refers to 230 km (140 mi) of the railway not yet completed between Allahabad and Bombay, a central point in Verne's work. But even the Le Tour de monde article was not entirely original; it cites in its bibliography the Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, de la Géographie, de l'Histoire et de l'Archéologie (August 1869), which also contains the title Around the World in Eighty Days in its contents page. The Nouvelles Annales were written by Conrad Malte-Brun (1775–1826) and his son Victor Adolphe Malte-Brun (1816–1889). Scholars believe that Verne was aware of the Le Tour de monde article, the Nouvelles Annales, or both and that he consulted it or them, noting that the Le Tour du monde even included a trip schedule very similar to Verne's final version.
A possible inspiration was the traveller George Francis Train, who made four trips around the world, including one in 80 days in 1870. Similarities include the hiring of a private train and being imprisoned. Train later claimed, "Verne stole my thunder. I'm Phileas Fogg."
Regarding the idea of gaining a day, Verne said of its origin: "I have a great number of scientific odds and ends in my head. It was thus that, when, one day in a Paris café, I read in the Siècle that a man could travel around the world in 80 days, it immediately struck me that I could profit by a difference of meridian and make my traveller gain or lose a day in his journey. There was a dénouement ready found. The story was not written until long after. I carry ideas about in my head for years – ten, or 15 years, sometimes – before giving them form." In his April 1873 lecture, "The Meridians and the Calendar", Verne responded to a question about where the change of day occurred since the International Date Line only became current in 1880 and the Greenwich prime meridian was not adopted internationally until 1884. Verne cited an 1872 article in Nature, and Edgar Allan Poe's short story "Three Sundays in a Week" (1841), which was also based on going around the world and the difference in a day linked to a marriage at the end. Verne even analysed Poe's story in his Edgar Poe and His Works (1864).
The book has been adapted or reimagined many times in different forms.