With the publication of ""The Innocents Abroad"" (1869), Mark Twain embarked on a long and successful career as the 19th century's best-selling travel writer. Jeffrey Melton treats Twain's travel narratives in depth, and in the context of his contemporary travel writers and a burgeoning tourism culture. As Melton shows, Twain's five major travel narratives - ""The Innocents Abroad"", ""Roughing It"", ""Life on the Mississippi"", ""A Tramp Abroad"", and ""Following the Equator"" - demonstrate Twain's mastery and reinvention of the genre.