The Innocents Abroad (Fully Illustrated Edition) and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Start reading The Innocents Abroad (Fully Illustrated Edition) on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Sorry, this item is not available in
Image not available for
Color:
Image not available

To view this video download Flash Player

 

Innocents Abroad (Signet Classics) [Mass Market Paperback]

Mark Twain , Leslie A. Fiedler
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)


Available from these sellers.


Free Two-Day Shipping for College Students with Amazon Student

Summer Reading
Summer Reading
Browse the best books of summer including blockbusters, beach reads, and editors' picks in our Summer Reading Store.

Book Description

January 1, 1995 0451525027 978-0451525024
Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1906. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXXII. WE were at sea now, for a very long voyage -- we were to pass through the entire length of the Levant; through the entire length of the Mediterranean proper, also, and then cross the full width of the Atlantic -- a voyage of several weeks. We naturally settled down into a very slow, stay-at-home manner of life, and resolved to be quiet, exemplary people, and roam no more for twenty or thirty days. No more, at least, than from stem to stern of the ship. It was a very comfortable prospect, though, for we were tired and needed a long rest. We were all lazy and satisfied, now, as the meager entries in my note-book (that sure index, to me, of my condition) prove. What a stupid thing a notebook gets to be at sea, any way. Please observe the style: '• Sunday--Services, as usual, at four bells. Services at night, also. No cards. "Monday--Beautiful day, but rained hard. The cattle purchased at Alexandria for beef ought to be shingled. Or else fattened. The water stands in deep puddles in the depressions forward of their after shoulders. Also here and there all over their backs. It is well they are not cows-- it would soak in and ruin the milk. The poor devil eagle* from Syria * Afterwards presented to the Central Park. looks miserable and droopy in the rain perched on the forward capstan. He appears to have his own opinion of a sea voyage, and if it were put into language and the language solidified, it would probably essentially dam the widest river in the world. "Tuesday--Somewhere in the neighborhood of the island of Malta. Can not stop there. Cholera. Weather very stormy. Many passengers seasick and invisible. "Wednesday--Weather still very savage. Storm blew two land birds to sea, and they came on board. A hawk was blown off, also. He circled round and round the shi...


Editorial Reviews

Review

“A classic work . . . [that] marks a critical point in the development of our literature.”—Leslie A. Fiedler --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

14 1.5-hour cassettes --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Product Details

  • Mass Market Paperback: 512 pages
  • Publisher: Signet Classics (January 1, 1995)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0451525027
  • ISBN-13: 978-0451525024
  • Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,290,356 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Twain (1835-1910) was an American humorist, satirist, social critic, lecturer and novelist. He is mostly remembered for his classic novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Customer Reviews

This book is worth reading even 140 years after its publication. C. M Mills  |  11 reviewers made a similar statement
He makes the most pitiful scenes oddly amusing so you don't know whether to laugh or feel pity. Luis Damian Robles  |  8 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
58 of 61 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Mark Twain is the Lincoln of our literature. Sam Clemens (1835-1910) wrote Huckleberry Finn in 1885 which has been acclaimed as our greatest American novel. Lesser known are his wonderful travelogues: "Roughing It' "Following the Equator"; "Life on the Mississippi and "The Innocents Abroad" published in 1869. This book is worth reading even 140 years after its publication. Twain style is a joy to read for he was a born storyteller and communicates his thoughts well on the page.
Twain was a reporter who joined the six month expedition to Europe and the Middle East on board the steamer "Quaker City." The pleasure tour had
been organized by the famous pastor Henry Ward Beecher (sibling of Harriet Ward Beecher) and Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. Neither of these notable made the trip citing other obligations.
Twain roomed with a young man from Elmira New York. He would later visit Elmira and meet his friend's sister Olivia. She would become his wife and the mother of the couple's three daughters.
The Innocents Abroad is a long book of 400,000 words covering over 500 densely written pages. Twain takes a sardonic, humorous view of European art as he guides us through the Louvre, Florence Italy and Rome. We visit London, Paris and meet with Czar Alexander II in the Crimea. Twain had a keen reporter's eye and a humorist's ability to paint word pictures of his fellow passengers,tour guides and natives of the fascinating cities and countries he visited on a busy itinerary.
As a Presbyterian pastor I found the most interesting part of the book dealt with Twain's tour of Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece and Israel. He was upset by the filth, disease and cruelty he saw in the land of Moses and Jesus Christ. Despite all his asides and digressions the observant reader can gain a good picture of what these places were like in 1869. Twain was an agnostic but knew his Bible.
Mark Twain was our greatest author. In this fine book you will get to know this fascinating man better as he shares his globe trotting journey with his readers.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The funniest book ever written-in the history of time! November 9, 2001
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
Ok, maybe that is a minor overstatement, but this is one hilarous book, to be read by people who have travelled, who plan to travel, and generally, people who want to laugh. A lot.

The book is also surprising for its timeless points about the journeying of certain upper white, middle class people going on a grand tour of Europe. I frequently had to remind myself that it was written in 1869 because his observations and the behavior of his shipmates is so close to the way people I studied abroad with acted-only a few years ago.

Twain also puts those "cosmopolitan" people who claim to have traveled, but don't know anything about any place they have been but and just like to lord it over everyone else that they have "travelled" and you have not.

Reading this book is like listening to a very wise, old man tell you about his adventures. Its not like a book, more like one long conversation. Twain takes nothing seriously-not himself, his fellow travelers or the places they visit. The words are another adventure-sometimes, you know he is setting you up for something, other times he is serious for a while, then you end up in the middle of a joke.

I know this is against the rules, but the other posters who don't like this book-don't be so serious and p.c. all the time. Twain is making humorous observations, at a time when a different standard was acceptable. Not to mention, he does manage to get a few zingers in there about what people are willing to accept and what they do not.

You will laugh yourself silly and want to book a trip-not to Europe, just to anywhere, after reading this book.

Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
32 of 36 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Twain, the Terrible Tourist December 2, 2005
Format:Paperback
Cliches aside, retrieving the outlook of mid-19th Century isn't easy. Having successfully concluded the upheaval of the War Between the States, the people of the USA, while bruised, felt confident. Their sense of righteousness was enhanced - they'd quelled a rebellion and freed slaves. Some took that attitude to other lands. The 1867 SS Quaker City excursion to Europe and the "Holy Land" was but one of those forays. It was special in that it carried one of the more discerning observers the United States had produced - Sam Clemens of Hannibal, Missouri and points West. He was to post letters to the San Francisco newspaper "Daily Alta California" describing the journey. The trip and the account opened Clemens' eyes and those of his readers over numerous legends.

In Clemens' baggage was a strong religious sense imparted by his mother, Jane. This cargo was balanced by Twain's more worldly experience on the Mississippi and his life in the mining communities in the West. When he crossed the gangplank to board the steamer, his gaze was sceptical and his pen ascerbic. His portrayal of the Quaker City's passengers began as they traversed the Atlantic, but it is his depiction of "foreigners" in their homelands that both shocks and enlightens. Starting with the Azores stopover, Clemens' observations of the islands are a tribute to their charms. Of the people, however, he has little positive to impart. They are dirty, noisy, conniving and devious. In general, they're "not American".

The use of the "innocents" is exemplified by Twain's description of contact with the Europeans. Educated in the minimal language training of the day, the travellers struggled to impart their wishes in French shops and restaurants. Twain seems to lay responsibility for this on the French "failure to understand their own language", but his description of the exchanges makes it clear where the problem lay. There was another side to this coin, however. Europeans were caught up in their own affairs. The United States was a remote and unknown element to them - "they'd had a war with somebody recently". Twain notes his shipmates were even then tinged with the arrogance that would fully blossom later. Respect for "tradition" had a variety of expressions in the "Quaker City" passengers. Twain depicts them all with delightful detachment.

As the ship made landfall in Mediterranean ports, Clemens and his comrades visit the "standard" tourist haunts. Paris is a must, Genoa is a treat, Rome is a maze of cathedrals and art galleries. Quickly disenchanted with "guides" he renames them all "Ferguson" and rebukes them at every opportunity. Michaelangelo seems so pervasive in Rome that the Pilgrims ask if Greek or Egyptian artefacts are his work - to the consternation of the "Ferguson" of the day. Twain's flexibility and ability to adapt to events leads some of the "innocents" to take the train from Rome to Naples - a city under quarantine. While the "Quaker City" lies still in the harbour, Twain and his companions tour the city and visit Vesuvius. A similar ploy works in Greece.

It is in the "Holy Land" that Clemens' descriptive powers and distrust of "authorities" flowers most brilliantly. Like many of his fellow passengers, he's been subjected to many tales from "Scripture" and a spate of earlier travel writers in Palestine. Unable to criticise the Bible outright, he lets the words speak for themselves, allowing logic and common sense to question dogma. The effusive travel writers, who had insisted Palestine was a "paradise" are brought out in contrast with Twain's observations of the barren desolation that was the Levant. He is scathing in his criticism of people who fabricate conditions there in order to sell their books. His veracity, of course, nearly had the opposite effect. "The Innocents Abroad" manuscript was originally rejected by Twain's publisher.

Sam Clemens' reputation was "made" with this book. It touched on many aspects of how people in the United States viewed themselves and the world. The subtle, but incisive, comments on tradition and legend were seeds finding fertile ground in a dynamic nation setting the practical foremost. "Innocents" was a challenge to dogmas and a paean to the sense of "realism" that permeated the post-Civil War era. The "Romantic" Era, still evident in mid-19th Century in the earlier accounts of Palestine, would be whisked aside. "Innocents" would be instrumental in that sweeping it away. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Book needed for class
I got this book for a class I took last semester. It's alright. Not sure if it'd be something I would buy just to buy but it's not horrible.
Published 3 days ago by Megan M
4.0 out of 5 stars Historically interesting, Humorous.Great writing by famous 19th...
I was interested in Mark Twains view of Europe and the Near East. His comments about fellow passengers werefunny and very descriptive. Read more
Published 1 month ago by grancy
3.0 out of 5 stars LONG AND DRY
I LIKE MARK TWAIN AS A WRITER, HOWEVER THIS BOOK WAS WAY TO DESCRIPTIVE AND TEDIOUS. I FOUND IT HARD TO FINISH. WAY TO MUCH DETAIL.
Published 1 month ago by MARGIE
2.0 out of 5 stars Hard To Read
The print is so small and dialog is hard to follow. I wish I had gotten it in hard cover.
Published 1 month ago by KAREN THOMPSON
3.0 out of 5 stars A little hard to get into
I thought it was hard to read but interesting. I haven't finished the whole thing yet. I was getting bored on the way to Israel which was my primary interest.
Published 2 months ago by Marietta Skeens
2.0 out of 5 stars innocents abeoad
The description of this book was like new. when I receive the book it was old, yellow, and aged that it begin that it begin to fall apart. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Yvette
4.0 out of 5 stars Good to read on a trip
I read this while traveling thru Turkey last May. Mostly read about the places I had been in the past as well as Turkey. Read more
Published 3 months ago by DC
5.0 out of 5 stars Hip, Horray for the "Innocents".
So perfect in it's sarcasm (sp), and also delightful reading in being non-PC. I enjoyed the travel aspects. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Edward Bigelow
5.0 out of 5 stars Still relevant !
I started reading it while traveling in the Middle East and finished just after we returned from Egypt one week ago. Nothing has changed. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Helene P. Myers
5.0 out of 5 stars Review of The Innocents Abroad
I just wanted to read more of Mark Twain's writings, and here was an economical way of doing so. The writing style of Twain is amusing, too.
Published 6 months ago by John H. Mitchell
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews


Forums

There are no discussions about this product yet.
Be the first to discuss this product with the community.
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 



So You'd Like to...



Look for Similar Items by Category