The Innocents Abroad Mark Twain COMPLETE EDITION The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress is a travel book by American author Mark Twain, published in 1869, which humorously chronicles what Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City (formerly USS Quaker City), through Europe and the Holy Land, with a group of American travelers in 1867. A major theme of the book, insofar as a book can have a theme when assembled and revised from the newspaper columns Twain sent back to America as the journey progressed, is that of the conflict between history and the modern world; the narrator continually encounters petty profiteering and trivializations of history as he journeys, as well as a strange emphasis placed on particular past events, and is either outraged, puzzled, or bored by the encounter. One example can be found in the sequence during which the boat has stopped at Gibraltar. On shore, the narrator encounters seemingly dozens of people intent on regaling him, and everyone else, with a bland and pointless anecdote concerning how a particular hill nearby acquired its name, heedless of the fact that the anecdote is, indeed, bland, pointless, and entirely too repetitive. Another example may be found in the discussion of the story of Abelard and Heloise, where the skeptical American deconstructs the story and comes to the conclusion that far too much fuss has been made about the two lovers. Only when the ship reaches areas of the world that do not exploit for profit or bore passers-by with inexplicable interest in their history, such as the passage dealing with the ship's time at the Canary Islands, is this attitude not found in the text.
Mark Twain's voyage from New York City to Europe and the Holy Land in June 1867 produced The Innocents Abroad, a book so funny and provocative it made him an international star for the rest of his life.
The Innocents Abroad is one of the most prominent and influential travel books ever written about Europe and the Holy Land.
Based on a series of letters Mark Twain wrote from Europe to newspapers in San Francisco and New York as a roving correspondent, The Innocents Abroad (1869) is a burlesque of the sentimental travel books popular in the mid-nineteenth ...
Twain describes his experiences traveling in Europe and the Middle East, and pokes fun at tourists and tour guides.
The Innocents Abroad: or, The New Pilgrims' Progress
Those who have read The Innocents Abroad and those who have not will find equal delight in this volume.
Contributors include Dave Eggers, Richard Ford, Pico Iyer, John Berendt, Alexander McCall Smith and Jane Smiley.
See also universal education Rittenhouse, Jane, 45 Roberts, Grace Strachan, 69–70 Robinson, Edward, 72–73 Roosevelt, Theodore, 51–53, 113, 156 Ross, Patricia, 108 rote instruction, 23–24, 26–28, 31–32, 37–43.
Successor to Twain's first collection of travel memoirs takes a second look at Europe. In "A Tramp Abroad," Twain's abundant humor waxes as freely as ever; this time, however, his...
Along the way Pearson provides a literary journey, enriching his encounters with descriptions of the great books and great writers who have also brought the world closer to their readers.