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 £20,000 wager (£2,242,900 in 2019) set by his friends at the Reform Club. It is one of Verne’s most acclaimed works.
Following publication in 1873, various people attempted to follow Fogg’s fictional circumnavigation, often within self-imposed constraints.
Phileas Fogg is the most laconic and orderly of men. His house in Saville Row is run like clockwork and his routine is meticulous. Passepartout, his new servant, is looking for a quiet life, but he is to be disappointed: on the very day he is employed, his master tells him to pack at once for a journey around the world.
At his club that day, Fogg bet half his fortune that he could travel the world in an easterly direction in eighty days; so he and Passepartout begin their voyage. But Detective Fix of Scotland Yard finds it coincidental that Fogg should want to escape England in such a hurry while there is a robber on the loose. Convinced they are one and the same person he joins them on the first leg of their epic travels.
A race against time to save face and fortune, Around the World in Eighty Days is both a thrilling and humorous adventure and a classic story of travel in an age gone by.