Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism : The Tide of a Great Popular Movement

This is an assertion that travel books are vital to Mark Twain's identity as a writer and to his cultural influence and not just, as many critics have argued, preliminary sketches or failed attempts at fiction. The book begins by outlining the conventions of travel writing in the 19th century and proceeds to document Twain's subversion of those conventions to his own ends: a reinvention of the genre. The remainder of the study examines Twain's travel narratives individually charting a progression from the Old World in ""The Innocents Abroad"" to the New World in ""Roughing It"" and finally his last travel narrative, ""Following the Equator"" where Twain searches for a complete escape from the ""tourist"" perspective. Twain's travelogues highlight the author's philosophical and moral evolution as a writer from the worldviews of ""innocence"" to ""experience"" and this book provides a perspective from which to view his entire body of work.