A Tramp Abroad / Following the Equator / Other Travels

by Mark Twain, Roy Blount Jr. (Editor)

It was as a humorous travel writer, in The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It, that Mark Twain first became widely known, and at the height of his career he returned to the genre in the works collected here. Like those earlier books, the frequently hilarious A Tramp Abroad (1880)-based on his family's 16-month sojourn in Europe from April 1878 to August 1879-blends autobiography and fiction, facts and tall tales. Twain's send-up of Old World customs as well as his critical dissections of Wagnerian opera and the German language are often interlaced with American reminiscences, whether in the form of an extended discourse on the language of blue jays or the recollection of an elaborate practical joke in Hannibal, Missouri, involving a printer's devil and a skeleton. A Tramp Abroad is presented here with the author's original sketches.

Written at a time of financial trouble and personal loss (the death of the author's beloved daughter Susy), Following the Equator (1897) is a darker and more politicized account of a lecture tour around the world, with Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, India, Mauritius, and South Africa among the stop­overs. Using humorous but often biting anecdotes as well as keen journalist reporting, the book details bush life in Australia and the culture of the Maoris in New Zealand, while lashing out at social inequities such as the Indian caste system, and racist imperialism connected with European settlement and gold mining in southern Africa. Twain rounds out the volume with extensive historical accounts ranging from the Black Hole of Calcutta to the events in South Africa that would lead shortly to the Boer War.

This volume also includes 13 shorter pieces, most of them uncollected by the author, including a lengthy firsthand narrative of the shah of Persia's 1873 visit to London, an 1891 description of Richard Wagner's operas performed at Bayreuth, an 1897 account of Queen Victoria's jubilee in London, and an 1898 analysis of vitriolic Austrian parliamentary proceedings. The texts of several of these "other travels" are presented in newly corrected and fully restored versions.

Genres: Travel, Fiction, Classics, Travelogue, American

1145 pages, Hardcover

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

For all that Twain is (justly) remembered for his fiction, his nonfiction may contain his keenest insights into human nature. These two travel books (one a semi-fictional romp through the Alps, the other a straightforward account of places visited on a world tour) and assorted other writings on foreign places and people are Twain at his best as a social observer and critic. For anyone curious about foreign countries (including that most elusive one, the past), they provide plenty of new and interesting bits of knowledge, and more than a little wonder. For those who love a good yarn, there are plenty of anecdotes, digressions, observations, and outright bullshit stories. Suffusing all of it is Twain's desert-dry, satiric wit, his righteous indignation (where appropriate), and the assurance I always get when I read his nonfiction that, however different societies may be across place and time, human beings are always the same.

(Special recommendation goes to "Stirring Times in Austria," an account of the complete implosion of the late empire's parliament over rank obstructionism and procedural quackery. The more things change...)

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure it's just risen way up to the highest level of any list of novels I've read in my life. For one thing, it's like the greatest episode of Law and Order ever made. For another, it's so filled with human emotion, with the ability of individuals to contain multiple perspectives and approaches to others, with richness of character, with intricately connected plot details, with philosophical deliberations, with just plain briliance. I looked forward to every chance I could snatch to read in this magnificent work over the last couple weeks. I can't believe it's taken me this long to find Dostoevsky, but I will find more.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twain's travel writing is, by far, my favorite of all of his output. These two novels are absolute gems, full of fantastically funny material right alongside some of the most in depth and informative travel writing that exists. My only complaint with this volume is that a decent amount of the supplementary essays are repeated almost word for word in the texts of the novels. Well worth reading.

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although there are many worthwhile and funny moments in the two books the comprise the majority of this volume, they are also definitely among Twain's weakest work. Both narratives get bogged down in ramblings and never seem to end up anywhere at all. The uncollected essays included are interesting: most from the early 1890s and from a Central European journey. However, they are also fairly easy to do without.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samuel Clemens AKA Mark Twain might just be my favorite writer of all time. The older I get, the more appreciate his non-fiction works. Not because they tell us tales of a simpler time but because they tell funny stories that often show us that in 150 years, very little about America or the world has changed. Whether that is a good thing or not is up to the reader. (I, and I think Clemens would agree with me if he were alive) that it most certainly is not.

[David Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A Tramp Abroad" is pretty great, "Following the Equator" is just OK, and the otherwise uncollected "Other Travels" essays, about 200 pages of them, are a delight. The best is the series about the Shah's state visit to London. Or is it the easily distracted writer's account of trying to arrange all the details of travel for his group in Europe without hiring a professional?

[Lorin Cary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twains 1867 Travels abraod. Long voyage. Humor clear. Sarcastic wit. No strong anti-relig. Pokes fun at self for being beguiled into buying kid gloves that don't fit, in Gibralter. Wowed by Tangiers. Description of dancing on board ship as it dips and rolls ain sea, hilarious.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing was great--the type, not so much so. Font size ranged from small to downright painful and increases read time significantly. Mark Twain at his dry, witty best.

[Larry Koester · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stopping at of 98. Don't find it interesting reading at this time.