His accounts of stagecoach travel, Native Americans, frontier society, the Mormons, the Chinese, and the codes, dress, food, and customs of the West are interspersed with his own experiences as a prospector, miner, journalist, boon companion, and lecturer as he traveled through Nevada, Utah, California, and even to the Hawaiian Islands.

Roughing It (1872) is the lighthearted account of Mark Twain's actual and imagined adventures when he escaped the Civil War and joined his brother, the recently appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory. Out of the book emerges the first full-dress portrait of Mark Twain himself, the breezy, shrewd, and comical manipulator of English idioms and America's mythologies about itself and its relation to the past. The result is a hilarious blend of vaudevillian comedy, actual travel guide, and stinging satire, directed at both the complacency of his fellow American travelers and their reverence for European relics. In his account Mark Twain assumes two alternate roles: at times the no-nonsense American who refuses to automatically venerate the famous sights of the Old World (preferring Lake Tahoe to Lake Como), or at times the put-upon simpleton, a gullible victim of flatterers and 'frauds,' and an awestruck admirer of Russian royalty. The Innocents Abroad (1869), based largely on letters written for New York and San Francisco papers, narrates the progress of the first American organized tour of Europe-to Naples, Smyrna, Constantinople, and Palestine. The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It (sometimes called The Innocents at Home) were immensely successful when first published and they remain today the most popular travel books ever written. The best-selling book of Mark Twain’s during his lifetime and one of the best-selling travel books of all-time.įull title: The Innocents Abroad, Or The New Pilgrims’ Progress Being some account of the steamship Quaker City’s pleasure excursions to Europe and the Holy Land With Descriptions of Countries, Nations, Incidents and Adventures, As They appear to the Author.This Library of America volume contains the novels that, when published, transformed an obscure Western journalist into a national celebrity. (BAL 3316) Overall a very clean and attractive copy of the scarce San Francisco imprint of The Innocents Abroad.Ĭomments: This work by Mark Twain details the humorous voyages of the Quaker City, as it travels to Europe and the Holy Land. Contains the following first edition points: missing page numbers in the table of contents (pp. Two frontispiece portraits and fourteen illustrated plates.

Publishers calf, black labels on spine, gilt title over labels. First edition, first issue of The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.

From the innocents abroad by mark twain