Mark Twain on Travel

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his loyal readership as Mark Twain, led a life as rich as his collection of published works. Over the span of a lifetime, his growth from a small-town Midwestern boy to a famed writer and lecturer was reflected in the dozens of positions he held in the literary field across the United States, in addition to about double the number of cities he roved through to get each job done.

“I began to get tired of staying in one place so long,” wrote Twain in his work Roughing It . His readers are still reaping the benefits of his restlessness today. Here, in Mark Twain on Travel , is a collection of his ever-astute observations of nineteenth-century America and Europe, as he experienced them firsthand.

As if packed within his luggage or perched atop the pages of his journal, observe the humor in Twain”s best travel writing. Listen in on conversations with fellow wanderers, from big-city dwellers to steamboat captains. Never departing without pen and paper, Twain”s continual movements across the nation and its bordering oceans fueled him to share insights that made him an icon of American writing.