Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) relates the hair-raising journey made as a wager by the Victorian gentleman Phileas Fogg, who succeeds
- but only just!
- in circling the globe within eighty days. The dour Fogg's obsession with his timetable is complemented by the dynamism & versatility of his French manservant, Passepartout, whose talent for getting into scrapes brings colour & suspense to the race against time. Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) was Verne's first novel. It documents an apocryphal jaunt across the continent of Africa in a hydrogen balloon designed by the omniscient, imperturbable & ever capable Dr Fergusson, the prototype of the Vernian adventurer.