MARK TWAIN

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
- Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

ABOUT MARK TWAIN

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, is undoubtedly one of America’s greatest writers.  He is known both as an outstanding humorist who captured the spirit of everyday people and as a perceptive satirist famous for scornful and insightful social criticism.  And, he loved to travel.  While Twain is certainly most famous for the fictional novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he also wrote several travelogues.  His book, Innocents Abroad, is one of the best-selling travel books ever and one of our top recommendations.  Twain narrates his five month journey traveling all around Europe and the Middle East in 1869, providing a hilarious perspective both on European culture and customs, and on the struggle for his fellow Americans to acclimate.  His other travel books include Life on the Mississippi, the story of his time working as a riverboat pilot, and Roughing It, the funny account of his experiences traveling, working and getting in trouble while exploring the American West.  Twain is one of America’s most interesting historical figures; he achieved great success while alive and still today remains an immensely popular author, perhaps best described by William Faulkner who called Twain “the father of American literature”.

A5 RECOMMENDED TRAVEL BOOKS - MARK TWAIN

GREAT QUOTES:

One of our favorite quotes at A5 Travel Books is often credited to Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.  Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore. Dream. Discover."   There is no real public record however of him actually saying this, as summarized in this Huffington Post article.  For a full list of Twain quotes, we recommend Twainquotes.com.

​“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
​– Mark Twain

INTERESTING FACTS AND LINKS:

  • There is an interesting collection of Mark Twain's travel writing called The Travels of Mark Twain, edited by Charles Neider in 2000.  It is a nice summary of Twain's work.  
  • The University of California is attempting to create an amazing digital critical edition, fully annotated, of everything Mark Twain wrote.  Learn more here the Mark Twain Project Online.
  • It is a well-known cosmic coincidence that Mark Twain was born during one visit of Halley's Comet in 1835 and died 75 years later during another in 1910,
  • Can't get enough Train?  Try the Mark Twain museum in his boyhood home in Hannibal, MissourI.

MINI BIOGRAPHY - MARK TWAIN