Mark Twain Was A Travelin’ Man
Monday, April 6, 2015
Mark Twain wrote one of the great, if not greatest, American novels, “Huckleberry Finn,” but in his day, he was better known for the travel books he penned.
His first book “The Innocents Abroad,” published in 1869, tells the story of his journey to Europe and the Holy Land aboard the steamship Quaker City and was the best-selling American book since “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” He became a global celebrity in part because of the tours he went on to lecture about his travel. A new book traces his footsteps around the world.
Roy Morris Jr. is the author of “American Vandal: Mark Twain Abroad.”
“There were thousands of travel books printed in the U.S. in the later part of the century,” he told Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson. “For Twain, [traveling] was actually a way of making money and throughout his career he was more prominently known as a travel writer than a novelist.”
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