Tag: Innocents Abroad

150 Years Ago Mark Twain Celebrated New Years Eve By Debating How Drunk He Had Been During the Preceding Year & Listening to Charles Dickens Read David Copperfield With His Future Wife

Posted on by Matt Seybold

1868 was a pretty important year for Sam Clemens. Over the course of it, he would turn the Quaker City cruise of the preceding year into a lucrative cross-country lecture tour and what would prove to be a bestselling book, The Innocents Abroad (1869). He made an extended stay in Washington, DC, gathering impressions which would form the basis for his first novel, The Gilded Age (1873), as well as several […]

“The Greatest Showman” vs. “The World’s Greatest Laughmaker”

Posted on by Matt Seybold

The Greatest Showman, a film about one of Mark Twain’s contemporaries and kindred spirits, releases nationwide tomorrow. Twain and P. T. Barnum were, by various accounts, friends, acquaintances, mutual admirers, and rivals. Mark Storey describes Twain as “the only man who challenged Barnum’s position as the leading celebrity of Gilded Age America.” And while Twain clearly felt a certain kinship with Barnum and treated him with cordiality, he also kept […]

Mark Twain, The Mason: Anticipating The Premiere of MARK TWAIN’S JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM

Posted on by Dwayne Eutsey

A new documentary, Mark Twain’s Journey to Jerusalem: Dreamland, airs tonight on PBS. Narrated by Martin Sheen, the award-winning film features insights from Twain scholars around the world. According to the filmmakers, Mark Twain’s Journey to Jerusalem will retrace “Twain’s footsteps using actual details from his letters and journals. The film tells a little-known story of Mark Twain as a young reporter, embarking on a maiden voyage over the Atlantic and across […]

Mark Twain Forum Reviews: Mark Twain & Europe by Takeshi Omiya

Posted on by Martin Zehr

Editor’s Note: CMTS is proud to partner with the Mark Twain Forum, which has long been a leading venue for reviews of new publications in Mark Twain Studies. Visit their extensive archive. Follow the link at the bottom of the page to read the complete review. A portion of Amazon purchases made via links from Mark Twain Forum Book Reviews is donated to the Mark Twain Project.  Mark Twain and Europe. By […]

Mark Twain in Damascus: A Quest for Immortality?

Posted on by Hamada Kassam

In The Innocents Abroad (1869), Mark Twain’s first bestseller and one of the most successful travel narratives in American literature, the acclaimed young author singled out and celebrated Damascus in his descriptions of Syria. In 1867, as a 32-year-old reporter for The Daily Alta California embedded with the Quaker City pilgrims, Twain had visited the Middle Eastern country. Highlighting the paradisiacal aspect ascribed to Damascus throughout history, Twain recorded that: […]

Mark Twain Wishes “A Happy New Year” With 1876 Postcard

Posted on by Matt Seybold

The above image, courtesy of The Mark Twain Project at UC-Berkeley’s Bancroft Library, comes from an engraved greeting card Twain circulated in January, 1876. William Dean Howells, upon receiving one, described the frog as “luridly hopping along, and looking as if he had just got out of a pond of hellfire.” The card was designed by True Williams, who offered it gratis to Twain and his publisher as thanks for the sustained […]