Following The Equator
A Journey Around The World
Following the Equator (sometimes titled More Tramps Abroad) is a non-fiction social commentary in the form of a travelogue published by Mark Twain in 1897. Twain was practically bankrupt in 1894 due to investing heavily into the failed Paige Compositor. In an attempt to extricate himself from debt of $100,000 (equivalent of about $2,975,000 in 2020) he undertook a tour of the British Empire in 1895 at age 60, a route chosen to provide numerous opportunities for lectures in English.
Throughout the novel, Twain uses the opportunity of visiting the various locations on his tour to espouse "perceptive descriptions and discussions of people, climate, flora and fauna, indigenous cultures, religion, customs, politics, food, and many other topics". The novel contains a significant amount of social commentary, although much of it is done in a satirical manner.
Although this social commentary is the great import of the book, it is notable that Twain also included a number of fictional stories in the body of what is otherwise a non-fiction work.
Excerpted from Following the Equator on Wikipedia.
The Complete Travel Books of Mark Twain:
The Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), Old Times on the Mississippi (1876), A Tramp Abroad (1880), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Following the Equator (1897)Following The Equator
| Author | Mark Twain |
| Country | United States |
| Genre | Travelogue, Social life |
| Copyright | Public domain worldwide. |
| Book cover | Thanks to Canva |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | Google-digitized |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive Reader: John Greenman 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 |
| Read online | Following The Equator I, II |