author
George Francis Train
1829–1904
A restless 19th-century showman, entrepreneur, and world traveler, he lived at full speed and rarely out of the spotlight. His larger-than-life adventures are often linked to the real-world inspiration behind Jules Verne’s famous globe-trotting hero.
1 Audiobook
My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year
by George Francis Train
About the author
Born in 1829, he was an American businessman, promoter, and writer known for turning his own life into a public spectacle. He was involved in major transportation ventures of his era and became famous for dramatic lectures, bold self-promotion, and an energetic style that made him hard to ignore.
He is especially remembered for his rapid journey around the world in the 1870s, a feat widely associated with the idea behind Around the World in Eighty Days. Accounts of his life also connect him with early street railway development and with the expansionist spirit of 19th-century American business.
By the time of his death in 1904, he had built a reputation as one of the more eccentric public figures of his age: inventive, controversial, entertaining, and impossible to neatly categorize. That mix of ambition and theatricality still makes him an intriguing figure for readers interested in travel, entrepreneurship, and unusual lives.