The Innocents Abroad Signet Classics

(in full The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrims' Progress) A humorous travel narrative by Mark Twain, published in 1869 and based on Twain's letters to newspapers about his 1867 steamship voyage to Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land. The Innocents Abroad sharply satirized tourists who learn what they should see and feel by reading guidebooks. Assuming the role of a keen-eyed, shrewd Westerner, Twain was refreshingly honest and vivid in describing foreign scenes and his reactions to them. He alternated serious passages--history, statistics, description, explanation, argumentation--with risible ones. The humor itself was varied, sometimes in the vein of the Southwestern yarn spinners, sometimes in that of contemporaneous humorists such as Artemus Ward and Josh Billings, who chiefly used burlesque and parody and other verbal devices. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.