How Did Phileas Fogg Win His Bet by One Day? The Clever Ending of Around the World in Eighty Days

Phileas Fogg thinks he has lost his 80-day bet, but travelling east he gained a day. How Verne's 1872 novel works, and the reporters who copied it.

Phileas Fogg wins his bet because he travels east: each time he crosses 15 degrees of longitude he sets his clock forward an hour, and by the time he has gone all the way round the world he has gained a full day without noticing it. Back in Britain he believes he has arrived a day too late, but the calendar in London says otherwise, and he reaches the Reform Club just in time. That last-minute twist is the heart of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, and the story of how it was written, and copied by real travellers, is almost as exciting as the novel.

A £20,000 bet at the Reform Club

Phileas Fogg is a precise, unemotional London gentleman and a member of the Reform Club. On 2 October 1872 he bets £20,000, half his fortune, that he can go round the world in eighty days. He must be back at the club by 8:45 p.m. on 21 December. He sets out with his new French valet, Jean Passepartout, carrying the other £20,000 for expenses.

The planned route runs from London to Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York and Liverpool, and back to London. Every leg is a ship or a train, and every delay threatens the bet.

A novel published in real time

The story was first serialised in the Paris newspaper Le Temps from 6 November 1872, over about 45 days, and the ending was timed so that readers followed Fogg's race against his 21 December deadline almost day by day; the final chapters appeared on 22 December. The book edition came out on 30 January 1873 from Verne's publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel, as the eleventh title in his Voyages Extraordinaires.

Why 1872 was the right moment

The journey only became imaginable because of three recent changes: the first transcontinental railroad in the United States (1869), the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), and the linking of India's railways (1870). In other words, the novel is a story about a world that had just become connected.

Verne was not the only one thinking about it. Thomas Cook organised the first round-the-world tourist trip, which left on 20 September 1872, and the American George Francis Train went round the world in 80 days in 1870; Train later complained that Verne had "stole my thunder". A magazine article titled "Around the World in Eighty Days" had even appeared in Le Tour du monde in 1869.

Detective Fix and the rescue of Aouda

Two complications keep the plot moving. The first is Detective Fix of Scotland Yard, who suspects that Fogg is the man who robbed a bank and follows him around the world.

The second happens in India. Fogg and Passepartout rescue Aouda, a young widow who has been drugged and is about to be burned on her husband's funeral pyre in a sati ritual; Passepartout disguises himself as the dead husband to frighten the priests. The rescue costs time, but it also changes Fogg: the cold calculator begins to act from feeling.

Arrested in Liverpool

At the very end Fix finally arrests Fogg in Liverpool. It is then revealed that the real bank robber has already been caught, but the delay seems to have cost Fogg everything. Then the missing day appears, he reaches the club in time to win the wager, and he marries Aouda.

Was the twist fair?

Readers have long complained that Fogg, a man obsessed with exact timetables, should have seen the extra day coming. There was also no International Date Line when the book appeared; the line became current only in 1880, and the Greenwich prime meridian was adopted internationally in 1884.

Verne took the question seriously. In April 1873 he gave a lecture called "The Meridians and the Calendar", and he pointed to Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 story "Three Sundays in a Week", which plays with the same idea.

Nellie Bly: 72 days for real

In 1889 the American journalist Nellie Bly tried to beat Fogg for the New York World. She left on 14 November 1889 aboard the steamer Augusta Victoria, having given her editor only two days' notice, and travelled almost entirely alone. On the way she met Jules Verne himself in Amiens, and she was back in New York on 25 January 1890, after just over 72 days.

She also had a rival: Elizabeth Bisland, writing for Cosmopolitan, set off in the opposite direction and finished in 76 and a half days. Bly's record lasted only a few months before George Francis Train lowered it to 67 days.

Stage and screen

Verne and Adolphe d'Ennery turned the novel into a stage play for Paris in 1874. The best-known film is the 1956 version directed by Michael Anderson, starring David Niven as Fogg and Cantinflas as Passepartout, which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Learn with Phileas Fogg: English expressions about time and travel

Expression	Meaning	Example
in the nick of time	at the last possible moment	Fogg reached the club in the nick of time.
against the clock	in a hurry to finish before a deadline	They raced against the clock across America.
to lose track of time	to stop noticing what time it is	He never lost track of time, except once.
to make up for lost time	to work faster after a delay	After the delay in India, they had to make up for lost time.
a close call	a narrow escape	Missing the ship was a close call.

Try this: Plan your own imaginary trip around the world in English. Write five sentences, one for each stage of the journey, using at least three of the expressions above, and end with a surprise twist, as Verne did.