The Innocents Abroad (1869) (The Oxford Mark Twain)

In 1867, Mark Twain set out from New York City for Europe and the Holy Land on the paddle-steamer Quaker City . The result of that trip was The Innocents Abroad , a travel book unlike any that had gone before it. Irreverent and irrepressible, Twain pokes fun at officious tour guides and offensive tourists alike. The book offers a glimpse of a major writer when he was young and just beginning to flex his muscles, and also serves as an enduring no-nonsense guide for the first-time traveler to Europe and the Holy Land. The trip stimulates Twain to meditate on how the “new world” is different from the “old” and engenders reflections on what a society must be like to be thought of as genuinely “civilized.” The Innocents Abroad is alternately profound and profoundly entertaining. Twain may find himself exasperated or exhausted–but the story he tells is never dull. It is no wonder that the book was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.