A precise London gentleman bets 20,000 pounds he can circle the globe in 80 days, using every mode of 1872 transport while a detective pursues him as a bank robber.
Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) follows Phileas Fogg, a wealthy, silent, clockwork-punctual bachelor of London's Reform Club, who wagers half his fortune that he can circumnavigate the globe in eighty days using the era's new steamships and railways. He sets off that same evening with his newly hired French valet, Passepartout, taking trains and steamers across the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, India, Hong Kong, Japan, and the American transcontinental railroad, back to London.
Unknown to Fogg, a Scotland Yard detective named Fix has mistaken him for the man who robbed the Bank of England and trails him across three continents trying to arrest him, repeatedly delaying his itinerary. Along the way Fogg and Passepartout rescue a young Indian widow, Aouda, from a forced sati, improvise a railway gap in India by elephant, and cross the American plains through a buffalo herd and a Sioux attack, always with Fogg's imperturbable calm and Passepartout's comic mishaps supplying the friction. Every setback is met by more money and more resourcefulness, never by panic.
The novel matters as Verne's clearest celebration of the technological unification of the world made possible by steam transport, telegraph lines, and colonial infrastructure -- the same networks the real-life Nellie Bly would use to beat Fogg's fictional record a few years later. Its twist ending, in which Fogg discovers he has an extra unaccounted day because he traveled eastward and crossed the international date line effect degree by degree, turns an adventure plot into a small lesson in geography and timekeeping, while the marriage to Aouda gives the mechanical Fogg an emotional payoff he never sought.
“What was certain, however, was that for many long years Phileas Fogg had not left London.”
— Chapter 1 – In which Phileas Fogg and Passepartout come to terms, the one as master and the other as servant · read this chapter →
“Jean Passepartout, a nickname that stuck to me, and that my natural knack for getting myself out of scrapes had earned.”
— Chapter 1 – In which Phileas Fogg and Passepartout come to terms, the one as master and the other as servant · read this chapter →
“This Fix was to keep the closest watch on all travelers taking the Suez route, and if one of them seemed suspect to him, to”
— Chapter 6 – In which the agent Fix shows a quite legitimate impatience · read this chapter →
“It was an adventurous undertaking, this voyage of eight hundred miles aboard a craft of twenty tons, and above all at this season of the year.”
— Chapter 21 – In which the master of the “Tankadère” stands in serious danger of losing a bonus of two hundred pounds · read this chapter →
“Phileas Fogg had, "without suspecting it," gained a day on his itinerary—and that solely because he had made his tour of the world going toward the east”
— Chapter 37 – In which it is proved that Phileas Fogg gained nothing by making this tour of the world, unless it be happiness · read this chapter →
It is the story of Phileas Fogg, a wealthy and rigidly punctual Londoner, betting 20,000 pounds at the Reform Club that he can travel around the world in eighty days. He and his valet Passepartout race by steamer, train, elephant, and sledge across Europe, Asia, and America while a detective wrongly pursues Fogg as a bank robber.
Because he traveled continuously eastward, Fogg gained four minutes for every degree of longitude he crossed, adding up to a full 24 hours he did not account for. The novel explains in Chapter 37 that he actually completed the trip in 79 days by the calendar, though his personal count read 80.
Passepartout is the French valet Fogg hires the same day the wager begins, a former circus performer, gymnastics teacher, and Paris fire sergeant. His mishaps -- from an opium den in Hong Kong to a scrape with Mormon recruiters on the American railroad -- provide much of the novel's comedy.
Fix is a Scotland Yard detective who mistakes Fogg for the man who robbed the Bank of England and tails him from Suez onward, hoping a warrant will catch up so he can arrest him. He repeatedly delays Fogg's journey without ever revealing his suspicions until late in the story.
Aouda is a young Indian woman Fogg and Passepartout rescue in Chapter 12 from being forced into sati (self-immolation) after her husband's death. She travels with them the rest of the way and marries Fogg at the novel's end.
Yes. He arrives at the Reform Club with ten minutes to spare, having spent about 19,000 of his 20,000 pounds in winnings on the journey itself, and gives most of the remainder to Passepartout and Fix.