Around the World in Eighty Days : Illustrated

The story starts in London on Tuesday, October 1, 1872. Fogg is a rich English gentleman and bachelor living in solitude at Number 7 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens. Despite his wealth, which is £40,000 (roughly £3,020,000 today), Fogg, whose countenance is described as "repose in action", lives a modest life with habits carried out with mathematical precision. Very little can be said about his social life other than that he is a member of the Reform Club. Having dismissed his former valet, James Foster, for bringing him shaving water at 84 °F (29 °C) instead of 86 °F (30 °C), Fogg hires a Frenchman by the name of Jean Passepartout, who is about 30 years old, as a replacement.

Later on that day, in the Reform Club, Fogg gets involved in an argument over an article in The Daily Telegraph, 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 (roughly £1,510,000 today) from his fellow club members, which he will receive if he makes it around the world in 80 days. Accompanied by Passepartout, he leaves London by train at 8:45 P.M. on Wednesday, October 2, 1872, and thus is due back at the Reform Club at the same time 80 days later, Saturday, December 21, 1872.

Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron—at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without growing old.

Certainly an Englishman, it was more doubtful whether Phileas Fogg was a Londoner. He was never seen on 'Change, nor at the Bank, nor in the counting-rooms of the "City"; no ships ever came into London docks of which he was the owner; he had no public employment; he had never been entered at any of the Inns of Court, either at the Temple, or Lincoln's Inn, or Gray's Inn; nor had his voice ever resounded in the Court of Chancery, or in the Exchequer, or the Queen's Bench, or the Ecclesiastical Courts. He certainly was not a manufacturer; nor was he a merchant or a gentleman farmer. His name was strange to the scientific and learned societies, and he never was known to take part in the sage deliberations of the Royal Institution or the London Institution, the Artisan's Association, or the Institution of Arts and Sciences. He belonged, in fact, to none of the numerous societies which swarm in the English capital, from the Harmonic to that of the Entomologists, founded mainly for the purpose of abolishing pernicious insects.

Phileas Fogg was a member of the Reform, and that was all.

The way in which he got admission to this exclusive club was simple enough.

He was recommended by the Barings, with whom he had an open credit. His cheques were regularly paid at sight from his account current, which was always flush.

Was Phileas Fogg rich? Undoubtedly. But those who knew him best could not imagine how he had made his fortune, and Mr. Fogg was the last person to whom to apply for the information. He was not lavish, nor, on the contrary, avaricious; for, whenever he knew that money was needed for a noble, useful, or benevolent purpose, he supplied it quietly and sometimes anonymously. He was, in short, the least communicative of men. He talked very little, and seemed all the more mysterious for his taciturn manner. His daily habits were quite open to observation; but whatever he did was so exactly the same thing that he had always done before, that the wits of the curious were fairly puzzled.

ABOUT AUTHOR:

Jules Gabriel Verne (1828 – 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his adventure novels and his profound influence on the literary genre of science fiction.

Born to bourgeois parents in the seaport of Nantes, Verne was trained to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to write for magazines and the stage. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages Extraordinaires, a widely popular series of scrupulously researched adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days.


  1. The Mysterious Island

    Jules Verne

    audiobookbook
  2. North & South (Civil War Boxed Set) : 40+ Novels, Stories & History Books in One Volume

    Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Randall Parrish, George Washington Cable, John Esten Cooke, Edward Robins, John William De Forest, Ambrose Bierce, Winston Churchill, Edward Everett Hale, Charles King, Natalie Sumner Lincoln, Charles Carleton Coffin, James Ford Rhodes, John McElroy, Lucy Foster Madison, Harry Hazelton, Henry F. Keenan, George W. Peck, John R. Musick, Robert W. Chambers, Joseph A. Altsheler, G. A Henty, B.K. Benson, W.H. Shelton, Byron A. Dunn, Ellen Glasgow, María Ruiz de Burton, Thomas Dixon

    book
  3. 100 Meisterwerke der Weltliteratur - Klassiker die man kennen muss

    Franz Kafka, Fjodor Michailowitsch Dostojewski, Rumi, Platon, Tacitus, Homer, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler, Alfred Adler, Marcus Aurelius, Arthur Schopenhauer, Walt Whitman, Joseph Conrad, Robert Louis Stevenson, Karl May, Alexandre Dumas, James Fenimore Cooper, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, O.Henry, Stefan Zweig, Charles Dickens, Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Joseph von Eichendorff, Klaus Mann, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Else Lasker-Schüler, Heinrich Heine, Herman Melville, Iwan Sergejewitsch Turgenew, Gustav Freytag, Thomas Wolfe, Jonathan Swift, Walter Scott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gustave Flaubert, Rainer Maria Rilke, John Galsworthy, Iwan Alexandrowitsch Gontscharow, Oscar Wilde, Lew Wallace, Voltaire, Lewis Carroll, Johanna Spyri, Mark Twain, Selma Lagerlöf, Rudyard Kipling, Jules Verne, Jack London, Miguel de Cervantes, Honoré De Balzac, Emile Zola, Guy De Maupassant, Moliere, Theodor Fontane, Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoi, Anton Pawlowitsch Tschechow, Dante Alighieri, Joseph Roth, Robert Musil, E. T. Hoffmann, Heinrich Mann, Kurt Tucholsky, Heinrich von Kleist, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Gottfried Keller, Sophie von La Roche, Theodor Storm, William Shakespeare

    book
  4. 50 Meisterwerke Musst Du Lesen, Bevor Du Stirbst: Vol. 1 (Golden Deer Classics)

    Voltaire, Golden Deer Classics, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Joseph von Eichendorff, Mary Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Honoré de Balzac, Jonathan Swift, Stendhal, Franz Kafka, James Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Alexandre Dumas, Arthur Schopenhauer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Christian Johann Heine, Herman Melville, Gustave Flaubert, Iwan Alexandrowitsch Gontscharow, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Lewis Carroll, Jules Verne, Emile Zola, Friedrich Nietzsche, Guy De Maupassant, Mark Twain, Molière, Robert Louis Stevenson, Karl May, Rudyard Kipling, Theodore Fontane, Joseph Conrad, Dietrich Theden, Arthur Schnitzler, August Strindberg, Oscar Wilde, Robert Musil, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Kurt Tucholsky

    book
  5. In 80 Tagen um die Welt. Ein Abenteuer-Roman. : Hörbuchzeit: Klassiker der Weltliteratur

    Hörbuchzeit, Jules Verne

    audiobook
  6. 30 Mystery & Investigation masterpieces

    Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Hanns Heinz Ewers, Hollis Godfrey, Thomas Hardy, William Le Queux, Maurice Leblanc, Gaston Leroux, Catherine Louisa Pirkis, Edgar Allan Poe, Frank R. Stockton, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Carolyn Wells, Fred Merrick White

    book
  7. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

    Jules Verne

    book
  8. In 80 Tagen um die Welt

    Jules Verne

    audiobookbook
  9. Around the World in Eighty Days

    Jules Verne

    book
  10. Meister Zacharius

    Jules Verne

    audiobookbook
  11. Jules Verne, Die neuen Abenteuer des Phileas Fogg, Ultimative Sammlung Volume 1 (ungekürzt)

    Jules Verne

    audiobook
  12. Der grüne Strahl

    Jules Verne

    audiobookbook

Verwandte Kategorien