Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad
Twain sailed on the Quaker City in 1867 and mailed newspaper letters home as he went; they became his best-selling book.
The voyage
In June 1867 Mark Twain, then a 31-year-old newspaper writer, joined one of the first organized American pleasure cruises, aboard the steamship Quaker City, for about five months through the Mediterranean: France, Italy, Greece, Constantinople, the Black Sea, the Holy Land and Egypt.
Did he send installments while traveling? Yes.
The San Francisco Daily Alta California paid his fare (about $1,250) in exchange for travel letters, about $20 apiece. He wrote around 50 letters along the way and mailed them from ports. They were printed as they arrived, weeks later. He also sent several to the New York Tribune and the New York Herald.
Back home, he reworked the letters into a book, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress (1869), sold door to door by subscription. It was his best-selling book in his lifetime and one of the best-selling travel books ever.
Why it was fresh
Travel books of the time were reverent. Twain was not. He mocked the guides who showed him the "authentic" relics everywhere, his fellow pilgrims who chipped souvenirs off monuments, and himself. An example: in Italy, he and his friends tortured guides by asking, about every famous name, "Is he dead?"
It was the same summer, 1867, that Jules Verne crossed the Atlantic on the Great Eastern. See A Floating City.
Key facts
- Twain sailed on the Quaker City, June to November 1867
- He mailed about 50 letters to the Daily Alta California, about $20 each, as he traveled
- The Innocents Abroad (1869) was his best-selling book in his lifetime