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Grolier Club Exhibitions

Twain the Traveler: Beyond the Mississippi 

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Following the success of the “Jumping Frog,” Mark Twain left the West to travel the Mediterranean aboard the steamship Quaker City in 1867. He convinced the San Francisco newspaper The Alta California to sponsor the five-month excursion in exchange for humorous travel letters about Europe and the Middle East. In 1869, he published the collected letters as The Innocents Abroad. It was Twain’s first commercial success and would remain his best-selling book throughout his lifetime.

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Lloyd’s Map of the Lower Mississippi River from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico.
New York: J. T. Lloyd, 1863.
 

Clemens served on a series of steamships beginning in April 1857. He spent most of October of that year on board the William L. Morrison, captained by his neighbor John N. Bofinger. This hand-colored pilot’s map of the Lower Mississippi, mounted into a ledger for ease of use, was used on the same vessel. The manuscript notes detail the sorts of cargo that the ship would have transported during Clemens’s time as a cub pilot. 

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E. Anthony. Stereoview of the steamship Quaker City.
[New York]: E. Anthony, July 4, 1859.

Popular throughout the latter 19th century, stereoview cards present two photographs of the same subject from slightly different angles, which can be viewed as a single three-dimensional image using a special handheld viewer. The title of this card refers to the steamship Quaker City, on which Clemens traveled while gathering material for Innocents Abroad. But the ship is not the prominent vessel in the foreground of the image; rather it is a smaller vessel visible in the distance. 

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Photograph of Mark Twain aboard the S.S. Minneapolis.
June 1907.
 

In June 1907, Twain traveled to England on the S.S. Minneapolis, bound for Oxford to receive an honorary degree. Twain is pictured here with two acquaintances he made on the trip. At right is Carlotta Welles, whom Twain befriended. He spent much of his time in transit with her, telling her that she reminded him of his daughter, Susy, who had died in 1896. 

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Oscar T. Shuck (editor). The California Scrap-Book: A Repository of Useful Information and Select Reading.
San Francisco: H. H. Bancroft and Company, 1869.
 

This early anthology of writing from magazines and newspapers along the Pacific Coast reprints some of Mark Twain’s travel letters for The Alta California that formed the basis of Innocents Abroad 

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Henry William Bradley & William Herman Rulofson, photographers. “Men of Mark.”
San Francisco: Bradley & Rulofson, 1876.
 

Photography was a new and exciting technology in the mid-nineteenth century, and Henry William Bradley William Herman Rulofson were among the earliest practitioners of the art in California. Clemens was photographed at their studio in April 1868, and the photographers included him in this collage made up of 110 separate photographs of their most famous visitors.

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Mark Twain. The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim’s Progress; Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City’s Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land; With Descriptions of Countries, Nations, Incidents and Adventures, as They Appeared to the Author.
Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1869.
 

Mark Twain’s first major commercial and popular success, The Innocents Abroad—a satirical “anti-travel” book based on his 163-day tour of Europe and the Holy Land aboard the Quaker City—would remain his best-selling book throughout his lifetime. 

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Mark Twain. The Innocents Abroad [salesman’s prospectus].
[Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1869.] 

William Aldrich. Custom wooden case for Innocents Abroad.
[Wisconsin, 1869.]

Many of Twain’s books were published as subscription volumes, sold in advance by traveling salespeople who carried incomplete sample copies that highlighted choice selections of text, illustrations, and binding options. This copy is stored in a wooden box engraved with the author’s name that was probably handmade by its sales agent, William Aldrich of Wisconsin. 

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E. A. “Doctors All, or, More Innocents Abroad.”
[June 1907.] Pen and ink on board.

Twain continued to be associated with The Innocents Abroad even after writing further novels. This cartoon, drawn for a student publication at Oxford University, applies the title of Twain’s book to the recipients of honorary doctorates in 1907: William Booth (founder of the Salvation Army) leads the procession with a bass drum, followed by Rudyard Kipling, Prince Arthur of Connaught, and Clemens himself.  

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W. & A. H. Fry. Carte-de-visite photograph of Mark Twain.
Brighton, [U.K.], [September 12, 1872].

During the English vacation on which this photograph was taken, Twain visited the offices of publisher John Camden Hotten, who had produced several pirated editions of Twain’s works for the British market. Though Twain posed as a “Mr. Bryce,” Hotten recognized him immediately. 

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Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens). Roughing It.
Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1872.
 

In this follow-up to Innocents Abroad, Twain recounts his travel to the Nevada Territory and his early years in the mining industry before his start as a newspaper reporter and his invention of the name Mark Twain. This volume also includes a revision of Twain’s early travel letters from Hawaii that were originally published in The Alta California.   

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Mark Twain. Life on the Mississippi.
Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883.
 

Here Twain turns his traveler’s eye to domestic subjects, recounting his brief career as a riverboat pilot along with the history of the Mississippi River and numerous tall tales from regions on its shore.