![]() Twain’s traveling companions aboard the Quaker City were pious Christian folk interested in discovering their roots, and that is why the journey culminated in the Holy Land. ![]() By Twain’s time, a class of “new pilgrims” felt themselves drawn back to the Old World, for reasons both spiritual and cultural. ![]() The Pilgrim Fathers emigrated to the New World in search of freedom from the despotism and corruption in Europe. The book has a definite American resonance too. It is in a true sense a pilgrimage, as Twain’s subtitle suggests the allusion to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is not meant frivolously. The book’s irreverence has been often noted (and quoted) but less remarked upon has been its shape, which has the mythic quality of a great epic. The sprawling travelogue became the bestselling book of Twain’s career, fixing his voice and persona in the public mind. Twain’s account of the trip was published two years later as The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim’s Progress. ![]() ![]() In 1867, the San Francisco Alta Californian assigned its 31-year-old reporter Mark Twain to cover a steamboat pleasure excursion to the Mediterranean. His Christian background is evident throughout “The Innocents Abroad,” which reflects the journey of all human beings to the heavenly homeland. But to dwell only on the “irreverent” aspects of his work is to see only a partial picture. Mark Twain is revered today for his liberal sympathies, as a satirist who punctured pomposity, hypocrisy, and pretension. ![]()
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