ABOUT THIS BOOK

Winner of the Elizabeth Agee Prize for best manuscript in American Literature

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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jeffrey Alan Melton is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama and coeditor, with Alan Gribben, of Mark Twain on the Move: A Travel Reader.

REVIEWS

"Melton's book addresses the issues of race, imperialism and culture in a measured, thoughtful way. . . . Melton is making deliberate headway and guiding the reader upstream, not simply allowing the reader to be swept passively along with the tide"

--Mark Twain Forum

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"This book should be compelling to anyone interested in Twain, travel writing, or Americans' attitudes about travel. It may be a testament to Twain's enduring insights--or maybe just proof that human nature doesn't change--that his observations about American travelers are as relevant in the age of the jet as they were in the days of the steamship"

--Foreword

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"Worthwhile reading for humor scholars, Twainiacs, and those interested in travel and travel theory generally." — Choice

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TABLE OF CONTENTS






1. The Success of Travel Books and the Failure of Tourism  I
2. Tourism and Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century  i6
3. Touring the Old World: Faith and Leisure in The Innocents Abroad and A
   Tramp Abroad  59
4. Touring the New World: The Search for Home in Roughing It and Life
   on the Mississippi  95
5. Touring the Round: Imperialism and the Failure of Travel Writing in
   Following the Equator  138
Notes   I67
Works Cited   I83
Selected Bibliography  I87
Index   I97