Content Warning: This section discusses depictions of colonialism and dated cultural perspectives, as well as racial and national stereotypes reflective of the book’s time of writing.

The reader is introduced to Phileas Fogg, a single man who lives in England in 1872. He is extraordinary for maintaining a single membership to the Reform Club and no other society. He gained membership to the club through a recommendation by the Barings for his great wealth.

Phileas is a quiet and generous man of habit with a mysterious knowledge of the world despite the regularity of his domestic routine. He is waiting to meet his new domestic servant, having let his previous valet go for bringing him shaving water that was two degrees below his usual demands.

Phileas hires the Frenchman Jean Passepartout.

Passepartout describes Phileas.

Passepartout describes himself as well. He is a man whose name describes his tendency to transition from one position and place to the next. He is looking to settle down into a position for a respectable British gentleman in a nice, relaxing home. Phileas seems ideal to the valet.

Phileas leaves immediately for the Reform Club, where he typically spends most of his day.