Further Reading

Primary Sources:

Kindle Division

Around the World in 80 Days (Kindle edition)
An annotated version of the classic tale, with newly painted illustrations and appropriate 19th-century photos and prints. Perfect for grades 6 and up.

Around the World in 80 Days, Optimized for Kindle
This “optimized” Kindle edition of Around the World includes a nifty hyperlinked table of contents for ease of navigation and a beautiful facsimile of the original 1873 cover of Verne’s famous “Voyage Extraordinaire.”

The Complete Jules Verne Collection
A great deal. 25 of Verne's classics available for mobile devices, and only $1 each.

Works of Jules Verne
For those wanting to download a lot of Verne at once, here’s a large collection including his most well-known works, for an affordable price.

Hand-Worn Division

The Extraordinary Journeys: Around the World in 80 Days (Oxford World Classics)
Providing an excellent contemporary translation (c. 1995), Verne scholar William Butcher stresses the author’s innovation, verisimilitude, and vision in this, the story’s first critical edition. Butcher blurbs: “Around the World in Eighty Days has been a bestseller for over a century, but it has never before appeared in a critical edition. While most translations misread or even abridge the original, this stylish version is completely true to Verne's classic, moving as fast and as brilliantly as Phineas Fogg's own race against time. Around the World in Eighty Days offers a strong dose of post-romantic reality but not a shred of science fiction: its modernism lies instead in the experimental technique and Verne's unique twisting of space and time.”

Jules Verne: the Definitive Biography by William Butcher, with a foreword by Arthur C. Clark.
Butcher offers up a unique biography for a unique author—a mixture of biographical speculation, science-fiction theorizing, and literary categorization. Butcher, who combines the gonzo enthusiasm of a fan with the knowledge of a scholar, has many ideas about Verne, and he shares them all. With a foreword from Arthur C. Clarke, the author of 2001: A Space3 Odyssey.

Amazon's own Jules Verne page
Haven’t found what you’re looking for? Comb through these voluminous Verne offerings, compiled by all those Amazon elves, at your own leisure.

Film Adaptations:

Faithful Division

Around the World in 80 Days (1989)
A three-part miniseries that aired on the BBC in 1989, this version of Around the World stars future James Bond Pierce Brosnan as Verne's Phileas Fogg, crossing the globe with Inspector Fix (Peter Ustinov) hot on his trail. Brosnan is dashing, the extended running time allows the episodes room to stretch out, and this is the most faithful of the many film adaptations of Verne's story.

Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days (1990)
Even though this is purportedly a nonfiction documentary, it captures the actual navigational spirit of Verne’s book better than any of the fictional attempts to dramatize the tale. In a seven-part, six-hour BBC miniseries, former Monty Python ensemble member Palin sets out to retrace Phileas Fogg's steps for the 20th century. Armed with his inflatable globe and little else, Palin sets out by train and ship, air travel be damned.

Less-than-faithful Division

Around the World in 80 Days (DVD, Special Two-Disc Edition)
The classic, Oscar-winning extravaganza from 1956, starring David Niven as the unflappable Phileas Fogg. Detours include a trip to Spain for some bullfighting (not in Verne’s book) and the now-famous balloon, in which Niven and Cantinflas (the Mexican clown who originated a tradition of pan-ethnic Passepartouts) embark. Needless to say, the balloon is not in Verne’s book.

This special expanded DVD includes a look at 1950s Hollywood, a trivia-laden commentary track from BBC Radio's Brian Sibley, TCM host Robert Osborne's informed introduction, and a 50-minute 1968 documentary about the film's producer, Mike Todd, his Broadway productions, his tempestuous marriage to Elizabeth Taylor, and this his lone foray into feature-film production. There's also 47 minutes of Playhouse 90's coverage of the lavish party Todd threw at Madison Square Garden to celebrate Around the World's one-year anniversary. Shorter segments show Todd at the L.A. premiere and the 1957 Oscars. Also included is the first Jules Verne film adaptation, Georges Melies's 1902 classic "A Trip to the Moon." Finally, there's a list of the 35 people who made cameos, including Marlene Dietrich and Frank Sinatra as a blue-eyed gunslinger.

The Three Stooges go Around the World in a Daze (1963)
Moe, Larry, and Curly set off with Phileas Fogg III, who is attempting to retrace his ancestor’s footsteps without spending a penny. (The Stooges are cast in the role of English servants—a sort of hydra-headed Passepartout—but they quickly revert to Stooginess.) Featuring every location in Verne’s tale. And more slapstick than you can shake a stick at.

Around the World in 80 Days (2004)
Steve Coogan stars as an amiably foggy Fogg, and Jackie Chan is his Chinese valet Passepartout, in this recent, kind-friendly adaptation of the tale. Goofy, fun, and filled with CGI, this adaptation serves as a kind of super-technologized romp in the vein of the Niven/Cantinflas version. Stay tuned for cameos—from Arnold Schwarzenegger to John Cleese, Owen Wilson, and Sammo Hung.

If You Liked Those, You Might Like These:

The Great Race (1965)
Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, stars of the classic Some Like It Hot, reunite for this turn-of-the-century tale about an epic automobile race from New York to Paris. Directed by Blake Edwards (of the Pink Panther movies) and costarring Natalie Wood, the film combines period detail, good humor, and technological thrills in a manner reminiscent of the best of Verne.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
A globe-hopping comedy directed by Stanley Kramer, Mad Mad World follows a star-studded ensemble of Old Hollywood types (including Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, Spencer Tracy, and Ethel Merman) as they search high and low for buried treasure, with the search turning eventually into a madcap dash for the cash. Like The Great Race, they just don't make 'em like this anymore. Stay tuned for cameo appearances, including one by Jerry Lewis, grumpy that he wasn't invited to be a member of the cast in the first place.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. I &
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. II
For lovers of Victorian adventure novels and their 20th-century analog, the superhero comic book, acclaimed author Alan Moore has created these thrilling hybrid stories. Featuring a gallery of recognizable 19th-century characters such as Dr. Jekyll (and Mr. Hyde), Ms. Murray from Bram Stoker's Dracula, H.G. Wells' Invisible Man, Allan Quatermain, the adventurer of King Solomon's Mines from H.R. Haggard's books, and, of course, Jules Verne's own dark vision, the mysterious Captain Nemo, these books are a rip-roaring good time (and superior, in every way, to the recent film adaptation starring Sean Connery).