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First Edition, stated first printing. Hard cover, 4to in teal blue illustrated cloth with pictorial decoration printed in gold and black to front board and spine, in the original slipcase. Illustrated map end papers, numerous linocut illustrations within text in black and white, plus seven full page in color. xxvii, 561 [563] pp. Printed and bound in Llandysul, Wales. CONDITION. Fine, like new.** A classic travelogue debuting Twain's signature witty and satiric style. Departing from New York, the five month "great pleasure excursion" by steamer and rail takes the reader through, perhaps, some of the less expected sights in Paris, Spain, Gibralter, Tangier, Alexandria, Cairo and various Holy Land venues, circling northward toward the Black Sea past Constantinople and around to Athens toward stops in many Italian cities including Florence, Rome and Venice, Naples, Pompeii, and toward Cadiz, hence to Bermuda and finally returning to New York. First published in 1869, this was Twain's first book, assembled from letters published in correspondence to the Alta California Newspaper. Mark Twain or, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), spent five months cruising aboard the steamship "Quaker City" promoted by the Plymouth Church of Brooklyn's Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. They departed New York on June,1867 with 165 carefully screened passengers, being promised the sight of "the ships of twenty navies--the customs and costumes of twenty curious peoples--the great cities of half a world...they were to "hob-nob with nobility and hold friendly converse with Kings and princes, Grand Moguls and the anointed lords of mighty empires!" (The "great pleasure excursion" included a visit to The International Exhibition in Paris.) This was a best-seller in its time and still remains excellent reading today.
Ref: FSOC 9620
$175.00