Past Perfect: Under The Volcano

In 867, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), better known as Mark Twain, embarked on a journey throughout the Mediterranean and Palestine. Until this point, the 32-year-old Missourian had done more adventuring than writing; he could boast only one wee book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and other Sketches—consisting of an amusing story about a frog-jumping contest with some incidental pieces about his travels, mostly in the American west. But his popular account of that 1867 overseas journey, Innocents Abroad (1869), set in motion a remarkably inventive career. During the next two decades, Twain created such immortal characters as […]