Around the World in Eighty Days

Adventure · Comedy

First published: 1872
Print length: 267 pagesPocket Books, 2007

Description

Phileas Fogg, a precise and reserved London gentleman, wagers half his fortune that he can travel around the world in eighty days. Accompanied by his newly hired French valet, Jean Passepartout, he sets out on an itinerary whose carefully calculated connections soon collide with unfinished railways and unpredictable hazards. Across India they improvise alternative transport and become involved in rescuing a threatened widow; elsewhere, pursuit and dangerous North American crossings consume precious time. Compounding every delay, a Scotland Yard detective follows Fogg under the mistaken belief that he robbed a bank. The novel turns modern transportation into a race between schedules and contingency, testing whether Fogg’s discipline can withstand a world governed by accident, courage, and constant motion.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Descriptive · Direct · Witty

Pace

Fast

Tone

Humorous · Playful · Suspenseful · Tense

Structure

Episodic · Linear

Focus

Character · Plot · World

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

AmbitionFriendshipMoralitySurvivalTechnology and societyWealth

About Jules Verne

Jules Verne was a French novelist, poet, and playwright whose adventure fiction turns nineteenth-century science and technology into engines of travel, danger, and discovery. His narratives often begin with an audacious proposition, then test it through routes, machines, calculations, and successive material obstacles. The prose is typically direct and descriptive, with technical explanation folded into briskly moving episodes and expansive accounts of unfamiliar environments. In Journey to the Centre of the Earth, a disputed theory becomes a descent through volcanic passages toward an underground ocean and prehistoric life. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea places scientific wonder inside the more troubling structure of captivity, as Aronnax’s fascination with the Nautilus competes with Ned Land’s determination to escape. Around the World in Eighty Days converts new transport networks into a timed sequence of missed connections, improvised conveyances, and accidents, with Fogg’s rigid composure set against Passepartout’s alarm. Verne repeatedly uses engineers, explorers, and exacting planners to measure human ingenuity against geography and chance, while leaving room for satire, mystery, and moral conflict.

Series

Voyages Extraordinaires · Book 11

Journey to the center of the earth

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Pocket Books
Language: English
ISBN: 9781416534723

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