Eighty Days, Give or Take

Readers write to ask whether a man could truly go round the world in eighty days. I did the arithmetic before Mr. Fogg ever left the Reform Club: the new railway across India, the line across America, and the steamers between them made it possible, if only just.

My desk was covered with timetables for months. A novelist of travel must be a little bit of a clerk.

Since the book appeared, real travellers have begun racing his time, and some have beaten it. I am delighted. Fiction ought to set records for the world to break.