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Post by farseer on Sept 7, 2024 23:40:08 GMT
The wikipedia page for the animated TV show "Around the World with Willy Fog" (the source for my avatar image) says in the list of characters: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_with_Willy_FogSo, this William Perry Fogg, is he really the inspiration for Verne's Phileas Fogg? Has anyone heard of this? |
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Post by phileasfogg on Sept 8, 2024 0:21:47 GMT
I have. I think they were the inspiration in name more than anything. Verne mentioned in an interview that he thought up the plot twist in Around the World first: Question: How could you have written all the science fiction novels you wrote without scientific studies? Verne: I had a good fortune to enter the world at a time when there were dictionaries on every possible subject. I had just to turn in my dictionary to the subject I wanted information upon, and there it was. Of course, in my reading, I picked up a quantity of information, and, as I said, I have a great number of scientific odds and ends in my head. It was thus that, when, one day in a Paris café, I read in the Siècle that a man could travel round the world in eighty days, it immediately struck me that I could profit by a difference of meridian and make my traveller gain or lose a day in his journey. There was my dénouement already found. The story was not written until long after. I carry about ideas in my head for years -- ten or fifteen years, sometimes -- before giving them form.
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Post by farseer on Sept 8, 2024 11:45:34 GMT
Thanks for the link to the Verne interview.
So yes, according to the Phileas Fogg Wikipedia page several people served as inspiration, one of them this Willian Perry Fogg, although at least in this case it seems to be William Perry himself who claimed to be the inspiration, rather than Verne explicitly saying so.
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