Hartford, Connecticut: American Publishing Company, 1880. Almost any American writer was better than Mark Twain at his worst: Mark Twain at his best was unapproachable.” He respectfully added that the book “presents Mark Twain at his best, and at his worst. Its pictures-drawn, for the most part, by a young art student named Brown, whom Clemens had met in Paris-were extraordinarily bad, while the crude engraving process by which they had been reproduced, tended to bring them still further into disrepute. He frets over an engraving depicting him drinking wine and offers his American publisher a fair amount of unsolicited advice on how to run his business.īiographer Albert Bigalow Paine had his own opinion about the book’s illustrations.

Through this series of letters, a meticulous Mark Twain demonstrates his knowledge of contemporary printing techniques and shows sensitivity to public perception. In the summer of 1879 he exchanged a flurry of letters with his publisher, Frank Bliss, about the illustrator and the illustrations selected for this book. He was obsessed with his word count and the images chosen to illustrate his text-the length and look of his product. As the author advised, it was a book “written by one loafer for a brother loafer to read.”Ĭlemens paid close attention to the design of his books. Their adventures were documented in Mark Twain’s third travel book, A Tramp Abroad, in which the two “pedestrians” took a walking tour through the Alps by means of every conceivable conveyance possible other than their feet. They were joined by their Hartford friend, the Reverend Joseph Twitchell, during their first summer in Europe, and he and Clemens took a month-long “tramp” together. The Clemens family travelled to Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, and England between April 1878 and August 1879.

A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain