George Francis Train

author

George Francis Train

1829–1904

A restless 19th-century promoter and world traveler, he helped shape rail and streetcar ventures on both sides of the Atlantic and became famous for a globe-circling journey that may have helped inspire Around the World in Eighty Days. His life mixed real business ambition with a flair for publicity that made him one of his era’s most colorful public figures.

2 Audiobooks

My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year

My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year

by George Francis Train

My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year

My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year

by George Francis Train

About the author

Born in Boston in 1829, George Francis Train lost his parents and three sisters to a yellow fever epidemic when he was a child and was then raised by his grandparents in Massachusetts. He went into business young, worked in shipping and trade, and built a reputation as an energetic, highly unconventional entrepreneur.

Train became involved in major transportation projects, including clipper shipping, street railways in Britain, and the Union Pacific Railroad and Credit Mobilier in the United States. He was also a prolific lecturer and writer, known as much for his showmanship and political grandstanding as for his business schemes.

He is remembered most widely for his dramatic journeys around the world, especially an 1870 trip completed in about eighty days. That feat, along with his larger-than-life personality, helped secure his place in popular history as a likely real-world influence on Jules Verne’s famous fictional traveler.