Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism

Résumé du livre

In this path-breaking work, Jeffrey Melton asserts that it was no coincidence that Mark Twain made such extensive use of the travel-writing genre or that so many readers loved these narratives. Twain recognized the lucrative sales potential of travel books and capitalized on it throughout a varied and formidable career; consistently, his travel books proved to be his best-sellers. As Melton illustrates, to ensure his success, Twain had to be more than a clever author; he also had to be a clever tourist. Grounding this study in tourist theory, Melton explores how, in five travel books, Twain captures the birth and growth of a new creature who would go on to change the map of the world: the American tourist. Arguing that Mark Twain stands at the beginning of the great tide of American tourism, Melton traces how Twain heralds its beginning in The Innocents Abroad and explores its various permutations in Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, and Life on the Mississippi. With his fifth and final book, Following the Equator, Twain is forced to acknowledge the close of tourism's "innocent" first phase. The significant changes in the political and cultural power of the United States and its increasing muscularity would place the nation at the center of the global stage. Mark Twain, the travel writer and tourist, recorded this remarkable transition, and in doing so became America's lead actor for the new age. Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism is the first full-length work to treat Twain's travel narratives in depth and in specific context with his contemporary travel writers and with tourism. Students and scholars of American and southern literature, Mark Twain and travelogue enthusiasts -- all will welcome this thoughtful look at the 19th-century's best-selling travel writer.