Back A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, Other Travels

Mark Twain: A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, Other Travels

Edited by Roy Blount, Jr.

“It is delicious, whether you open it at the sojourn in Heidelberg, or the voyage down the Neckar on a raft, or the mountaineering in Switzerland, or the excursion beyond Alps into Italy.”—WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS on A Tramp Abroad

Overview
Table of Contents

Overview

Interviews Susan K. Harris: The round-the-world trip that made Mark Twain an anti-imperialist
March 31, 2020

Save $125 when you buy all eight volumes of the Complete Mark Twain Library.

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 journalistic observation, 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.

Roy Blount, Jr., volume editor, is the author of 21 books, most recently Alphabet Juice (2008). He has written introductions to four books by Mark Twain, including the first book-form publication of Twain’s story A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage (2001). He is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and a regular panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Project support for this volume was provided by The Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation.

Mark Twain: A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, Other Travels is kept in print by a gift from The Berkley Foundation to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
Table of Contents

A Tramp Abroad

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

Other Travels
The Shah of Persia
Aix-les-Bains
Bayreuth
Playing Courier
An Austrian Health Factory
The Cradle of Liberty
The Chicago of Europe
The Cholera Epidemic in Hamburg
Down the Rhône
The Lost Napoleon
Some National Stupidities
Queen Victoria’s Jubilee
Stirring Times in Austria

28.00 List Price: $40.00 (Save: 30%) Free shipping on orders $50 and over

Or buy from our partners

Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #202160

ISBN: 978-1-59853-066-7 1145 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 200 Library of America Series

Subscribers can purchase the slipcased edition by signing in to their accounts.

Related Books

Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1852–1890 LOA N°60

Mark Twain: Historical Romances LOA N°71

Mark Twain: The Gilded Age & Later Novels LOA N°130

Mark Twain: Mississippi Writings LOA N°5

Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1891–1910 LOA N°61

Library of America

CURATOR

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Learn More

PUBLISHER

From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as America’s literary canon.

Browse our books Subscribe

NON-PROFIT

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come.

Support our mission

Mark Twain: A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, Other Travels

Related Books

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.