On a seemingly normal day at the exclusive Reform Club, Phileas Fogg, a gentleman of great wealth and exacting tastes, makes an extraordinary GBP20,000 wager; he will perform an impossible feat and circumnavigate the globe in just eighty days. Accompanied only by his new French valet, the steady Passepartout, he sets off on a thrilling journey. Adventure, chaos and romance ensue as the daring pair harness the new power of steam to escape their ever-increasing enemies and beat the clock. The exciting adventures of Fogg and Passepartout in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days will entertain modern readers as much as they did the Victorians, and are accompanied here by an afterword from John Grant. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Author Biography

Jules Gabriel Verne was born in France in 1828 and was destined to follow his father into the legal profession. He trained for the bar in Paris but took more readily to literary life, befriending Dumas and Hugo, and making his living by writing librettos. His first science-based novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was published in 1862 and made him famous. Verne went on to write dozens more such adventures, including Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). In later life, he entered local politics at Amiens, where he had a home, and also lived in Paris, in the street now named Boulevard Jules Verne. He died in 1905.