Mark Twain, travel books, and tourism: the tide of a great popular movement

Abstract

With the publication of The Innocents Abroad (1869), Mark Twain embarked on a long and successful career as the 19th century's best-selling travel writer. Jeffrey Melton treats Twain's travel narratives in depth, and in the context of his contemporary travel writers and a burgeoning tourism culture. As Melton shows, Twain's five major travel narratives - The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad, and Following the Equator - demonstrate Twain's mastery and reinvention of the genre.