Around the World in Eighty Days (THE GREAT CLASSICS LIBRARY)

"Around the World in Eighty Days" is Jules Verne's most popular book in English-speaking countries and yet does not include the slightest touch of his most famous genre: science fiction. Instead, he leveraged the growing and actual possibilities of his time to envision a voyage around the world filled with additional dramas (rescuing a fair maiden, being chased - like Jean Valjean and the modern "Fugitive" - by a policeman), taking his eager readers of the period through exotic lands (America being one of these).

Some developments in transportation which inspired Verne were the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in America (1869), the linking of the Indian railways across the sub-continent (1870), and the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). Despite the common image associated with the novel, one method the travelers do NOT use is a hot air balloon.