Around the World in Eighty Days (Bantam Classics)

Author: Verne, Jules

Brand: Penguin Random House

Color: Tan

Binding: mass_market

Number Of Pages: 208

Release Date: 01-04-1984

Part Number: part_0553213563

Details: Product Description
Jules Verne Great excitement and awe greeted its publication in 1873, and today Around the World in Eighty Days remains Jules Verne’s most successful novel. A daring wager by the eccentric and mysterious Englishman Phileas Fogg that he can circle the globe in just eighty days initiates this marvelous travelogue and exciting suspense story. Together with his manservant, Passepartout, Fogg makes a breathless world tour, overcoming wild misadventures and finding time to rescue a beautiful Indian maharani from a burning funeral pyre—all the while restlessly pursued by a bumbling detective called Mr. Fix. Realistically utilizing nearly every means of transportation known in the 1870s,
Around the World in Eighty Days generated enchantment with scientific progress—and its delightful mixture of fantasy, comedy, and dazzling suspense has kept it a perennially superb entertainment.
Review
“The reason Verne is still read by millions today is simply that he was one of the best storytellers who ever lived.”
—Arthur C. Clarke
About the Author
Jules Verne was born into a family with a seafaring tradition in Nantes, France in 1828. Verne was sent to Paris to study law, but once there, he quickly fell in love with the theater. He was soon writing plays and opera librettos, and his first play was produced in 1850. When he refused his father's entreaties to return to Nantes and practice law, his allowance was cut off, and he was forced to make his living by selling stories and articles. Soon he was turning out imaginative stories such as
Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863),
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), and
From the Earth to the Moon (1865), which were immensely popular all over the world. His ability to envision the next stage in man's technological progress produced
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and
Michael Strogoff (1876). His biggest success came with
Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). Verne's books made him famous and rich. In 1876, he bought a large steam yacht in which he could write more comfortably than on shore. His books were widely translated, dramatized, and later filmed. He died in Amiens in 1905.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1

In which Phileas Fogg and Passepartout accept each other, the one as master, the other as man

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

EAN: 9780553213560

Package Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.6 inches

Languages: English