BOOK REVIEW

_The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim's Progress_. Trauring, Philip,
(ed). Quint Books, 2024. Pp. xvi + 717. Paper, 6" x 9". $19.95. ISBN
979-8990999800. Hardcover, $38.00. ISBN 979-8990999817.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by
Barbara Schmidt

Copyright © 2024 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.


Philip Trauring is a new name in Mark Twain scholarship. He has never
previously published a scholarly journal article or presented a research
paper on Mark Twain at any conference. However, it would be a serious
mistake to underestimate Trauring and his ability to annotate and publish
under his own label Mark Twain's groundbreaking, bestseller travel epic
_The Innocents Abroad_. This new Quint Books edition proves Trauring has
utilized the best authorities in his Mark Twain research. The wraparound
photo on the book's cover features a rarely-seen color image of the _Quaker
City_ steamship, made in 1867 in Italy. The original painting is now owned
by the Shapell Manuscript Foundation. Trauring acknowledges Mark Twain
scholar Kevin Mac Donnell for providing previously unpublished material for
an Appendix and Robert Hirst of the Mark Twain Project for providing
typescripts of primary research materials as well as a copy of Hirst's own
dissertation. Benjamin Griffin, also of the Mark Twain Project, provided
access to historical documents.

Trauring, a former technology entrepreneur, has lived abroad many years and
has a personal knowledge of many of the sites Mark Twain visited on his
tour of the Holy Land. He responded to interview questions regarding his
motivation for researching and publishing this now indispensable edition
which features over 1,200 footnotes (conveniently placed at the bottom of
pages for easy access), eight appendices, a lexicon, and even an index of
people, places and things (a feature I have never previously seen in a Mark
Twain edition). It was a project that he completed in two years. The only
previous annotated edition of _The Innocents Abroad_ was the unillustrated
1984 edition issued by Library of America--a dual edition paired with
_Roughing It_--that, due to limited space requirements, featured only 153
end notes written by Guy Cardwell. When comparing the two editions, it is
interesting to observe that Trauring and Cardwell chose to annotate the
same material in most cases, but they do not always agree on some facts.
Trauring's more recent research has benefited by the abundance of new
database and research materials that have become available in the past
forty years.

According to Trauring, "I spent many years living abroad, and when I
returned to the US, I thought my children were behind in their knowledge of
American literature. To be sure they were, but as I looked into it I found
a very different world from when I was in high school. While my children
were behind, I found that to a large extent so were their classmates and
others their age. Perhaps we simply live in the world of YouTube and
TikTok, but I thought maybe I could help make some of the books I loved
more approachable" (Trauring, August 13, 2024). Reading through Trauring's
annotations, it is easy to visualize his children at his side asking
questions about 19th century slang terms and figures of speech that many
21st century readers do not recognize. Terms like "gallus" and "magic
lantern" and "sally forth" and "Gilderoy's Kite" and "seven-league boots"
and dozens more are defined and put in historical context for today's
readers. Nautical terms such as "dead-light" and "bowsprit" and "yawl" and
"thort-ships" and "belaying pin" are defined, as well as how to tell time
on a ship by the count of bells.

Trauring's choice of annotations reveal how often older generation Mark
Twain scholars may have overestimated the abilities of younger readers to
intuitively grasp these definitions and concepts. Trauring also has a
talent for including additional historical insights and entertaining trivia
into his annotations--such as the fact that all passengers on board the
_Quaker City_ used pocket watches because wrist watches had not yet been
invented; or that one of the books by Victor Hugo that Mark Twain
referenced in a story was made into a movie in 1953 starring Rock Hudson;
or how the US Consul in the Azores at the time of Twain's visit was
connected to a murder trial that was possibly the first to use dental
records to convict a murderer. These tidbits are plentiful throughout the
book.

Mark Twain documented his five month journey with complete strangers on the
steamship _Quaker City_ traveling to Europe and the Holy Land with a series
of newspaper articles mailed back to the US. In his Introduction, Trauring
explains the trip was one of the first organized tours from the US to
Europe after the Civil War and generated immense interest in the public and
press. The San Francisco _Daily Alta_ newspaper paid today's equivalent of
$25,000 for Mark Twain's ticket in order to obtain his eyewitness accounts.

From Gibraltar, Spain, France, Genoa, Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome,
Naples, Athens, Constantinople, Odessa, Yalta, Smyrna, Beirut, Damascus,
the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, Jerusalem, Cairo, Alexandria, and
Tangiers--countries and cities opened their art galleries, churches,
history and geography to the excursionists. Mark Twain's lampooning of the
religious absurdities he observed grew (as did his skepticism of religion,
politics and mankind) throughout the trip in the newspaper dispatches he
was sending back home. The American newspaper readers loved his honest and
candid impressions laced with humor that later resulted in a book that
became a bestseller.

Trauring's edition is based on the first edition published by American
Publishing Company in 1869 with some updates to spelling that were made in
the 1899 edition. All 235 illustrations from the first edition are
included. The cover utilizes the subtitle "The New Pilgrim's Progress"
(singular, as did the cover of the 1869 edition) while the title page
utilizes "The New Pilgrims' Progress" (plural, also as in the first
edition). This edition also incorporates subject headers at the top of each
page and these are included in the Table of Contents. Trauring emphasizes
his footnotes are meant to provide facts without any literary criticism.

Valuable research materials in Appendix 1 include a list of contemporaneous
accounts such as other passengers' notebooks and where they are now located
or where they were published. Trauring also references his own website (
quintbooks.com) that he has designed for this edition and contains online
links to all of Mark Twain's newspaper accounts of the trip. Appendix 2
includes a bibliography of Mark Twain's own source materials and guide
books that he used throughout the excursion. Appendix 3 lists Trauring's
own research materials and websites he utilized in annotating this edition
(including the Mark Twain Forum). Appendix 4, compiled from five different
sources, includes a list of all excursionists on the _Quaker City_ and the
nicknames Mark Twain gave some of them. Appendix 5 includes the list of the
ship's officers and crew (80 names) based on passenger Robert Bell's
journal that is currently in the Kevin Mac Donnell collection and published
here for the first time.

Appendix 6 is a reprint of an article written by Mark Twain's fellow
passenger Mary Mason Fairbanks who became his lifelong friend. Fairbanks
wrote the article for the January 1892 _The Chautauquan_ magazine, more
than twenty years after _The Innocents Abroad_ had become a national best
seller. Fairbanks describes the profound impact the five month journey
abroad to Europe, Asia, and the African continent had on Clemens, the young
journalist. "It was the bridge by which he crossed from a restless,
wavering, well-nigh purposeless youth, to a new life of growing
aspirations, expanding affectation, fixed ambitions, and a national
celebrity" (p. 675). She concludes, "The _Quaker City_ sailed out of New
York harbor with no celebrities on board. She brought back the Great
American Humorist" (p. 679).

By contrast, two appendices feature uncomplimentary articles and interviews
by Mark Twain's fellow passengers. Appendix 7 is a reprint of passenger
Stephen M. Griswold's May 3, 1910 letter to the _Brooklyn Daily Eagle_,
written after Mark Twain died. Griswold put forth the sensational claim
that Mark Twain never visited the Russian Czar Alexander II in Yalta as he
claimed in _The Innocents Abroad_. According to Griswold, Mark Twain and
seven other passengers attended a dance ashore the night before but
returned to the ship too late the next morning to make the visit with the
Czar and his family because the ship's passengers and their royal escort
had left without them. Griswold claimed Twain later asked to use Griswold's
notes of the visit to write up the event for his own newspaper report. In a
June 5, 1910 interview in the same newspaper, Griswold repeated his claim.
Chapter 38 of _The Innocents Abroad_ indicates Mark Twain did attend a
dance ashore in Yalta. He wrote, "In that Russian town of Yalta I danced an
astonishing sort of dance an hour long and one I had not heard of before,
with a very pretty girl . . ." (p. 401). However, evidence indicating Mark
Twain did manage to make the visit with the Czar includes a letter written
to his mother the following day on August 26, 1867 describing the visit.
Trauring emphasizes he has found no direct contemporary evidence to support
Griswold's claim, made forty years after the voyage and after Mark Twain's
death.

Appendix 8 is a reprint of an interview with passenger and journalist Nina
Larowe, published in the _Morning Oregonian_ on April 22, 1910, after Mark
Twain died. Larowe's uncomplimentary article criticized Mark Twain's
drinking and swearing. She complained, "Twain was not a bit religious and
he was hard on the religious people" (p. 693).

Trauring's book concludes with a Lexicon of unusual words found in _The
Innocents Abroad_ and an Index of items such as Biblical References,
Christian Saints, Literary References, Newspapers, Places, Songs, etc. that
Trauring developed to help himself navigate as he worked on annotations.

Readers may wonder how Truaring's edition, published under his own imprint
Quint Books, will differ from a future Works edition published by the
editors of the Mark Twain Project and University of California Press. The
University of California Press editions focus on establishing authoritative
texts based on actual manuscripts including those never previously
published, comparisons of original newspaper reports with first edition
book publication, comparison of American and European editions, determining
accidental variations due to editing and typesetting, and establishing
authorial intent. It is likely Trauring's research on the annotations he
has incorporated into the Quint Books edition will be beneficial to all
future editions.

Reading through Trauring's _The Innocents Abroad_ is the equivalent of
rediscovering Mark Twain guiding his contemporary readers through the 19th
century pleasure excursion trip while Philip Trauring is whispering hints
in the reader's ear of what was really happening and how these same places
and countries and cities look today. It really is a "Quint Essential"
edition.