Around the World in Eighty Days is an adventure novel written by renowned French author Jules Verne, published in 1873. It tells the story of Phileas Fogg, a resident of London, who makes a bet with the members of his club that he can circumnavigate the globe over land and sea in less than eighty days. This novel is one of Verne's most famous.
In the middle of his writing career, Verne purchased a ship and began sailing around the British Isles and the Mediterranean, with many of his adventures in these ports providing inspiration for Around the World in Eighty Days. The idea for the novel came to him while reading a newspaper in a Paris café in which it was stated that a man could make a journey around the world in eighty days. He wondered how the inevitable crossing of the International Date Line would come into play, making the traveler gain or lose a day, and thus the idea for the novel was born.
The idea of traveling around the world in a certain amount of time was popular, and other writers had written about it before, dating back all the way to Greek traveler Pausanias writing "Around the World" around 100AD. An Italian traveler named Gemelli Careri also wrote a book in 1699 called Voyage Around the World, providing very detailed accounts of civilizations outside of Europe. In 1872 Thomas Cook set out on a journey around the world that took seven months, and documented it in a series of letters. This was just one year before Verne's novel was published, and likely provided some influence.
Around the World in Eighty Days has been adapted into film a number of times, with the 1956 version becoming particularly famous, followed by Disney's adaptation in 2004, which deviated significantly from the events in the book. The novel has been adapted for theatre, television, and radio as well.
