Le tour du monde en 80 jours d’après le roman de Jules Verne (Around the World in 80 Days after the novel by Jules Verne) (Paris: [Société Française de Jeux et Jouets, ca. 1915]). Chromolithographed board in the original box. Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process
If your New Year’s resolution is to follow Phileas Fogg’s attempt to circumnavigate the globe but you don’t have eighty days to spare, you could always play this board game. You begin with Fogg and his French assistant, Jean Passepartout, leaving London at 8:45 p.m. on October 2, 1872. Eighty spaces later, you return on December 21, 1872 to win the bet and 20,000 pounds.
Along the way, you will have to bribe the ship’s engineer to reach Bombay ahead of schedule. You will lose two days helping Aouda, the young Indian woman who was drugged with opium, but she will make an interesting traveling companion later on. You will be reunited with Passepartout in Yokohama, who has been working at a circus to raise the money for your passage home.
The box has no publisher or date but we assume “J.J.” stands for the toy publisher Société Française de Jeux et Jouets and other collectors have dated this chromolithographed edition around 1915. An earlier version had a lithographed board with hand coloring.
To see the actual book in its first English edition:
Jules Verne (1826-1905), The Tour of the World in Eighty Days (Boston: J.R. Osgood and company, 1873). William H. Scheide Library 13.2.21
