The Innocents Abroad

The Innocents Abroad began as a series of travel letters written mainly for the Alta California, a San Francisco newspaper that sponsored Mark Twain’s participation in his trip to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867 aboard the steamship Quaker City. On the excursion from New York to Palestine they traveled a distance of over twenty thousand miles by sea and land through France, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Russia, Turkey and Egypt. Through his humorous writings he describes countries, nations, incidents, adventures and some of the people he encountered along the way. Elisha Bliss, published these letters as Innocents a subscription book in 1869, and then suggested to Twain that he revise the letters into this book. With over 234 illustrations more than 70, 000 copies of this book sold over the first year. This success helped Twain’s success prompting the American Publishing Company to request more of his books for publication.