Description: Winner of the Elizabeth Agee Prize for best manuscript in American Literature
With the publication of The Innocents Abroad (1869), Mark Twain embarked on a long and successful career as the 19th century's best-selling travel writer. Jeffrey Melton treats Twain's travel narratives in depth, and in the context of his contemporary travel writers and a burgeoning tourism culture. As Melton shows, Twain's five major travel narratives--The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad, and Following the Equator--demonstrate Twain's mastery and reinvention of the genre.Review Quotes: "Melton's book addresses the issues of race, imperialism and culture in a measured, thoughtful way. . . . Melton is making deliberate headway and guiding the reader upstream, not simply allowing the reader to be swept passively along with the tide"--Mark Twain Forum