7.75 x 11.25”; 445 pages. Letterpress from Monotype Bell on Johannot paper. Twenty pages of illustrations. The two-volume set is handbound between red cloth covered boards with exposed spine sewing and housed in a black and white linen-covered case wrapper with black leather straps and brass studs, intended to suggest a portmanteau. "Being an Account of the Steamship Quaker City's 1867 Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land; with Descriptions of Countries, Nations, Incidents and Adventures, as They Appeared to the Author." With cartoon illustrations by Heather McAdams who was sent by the publisher in the Summer of 1995 to retrace the authors steps and "report on the present state of tourism." In one of his most exuberant nonfiction works, Twain wrote, "The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language." The companion themes which fill these pages — the shallowness of the sites to be visited and the visitors — are as well revealed in McAdams' new cartoons as in the master satirist's words. Text follows a first edition copy in the possession of Northwestern University Library. One of the books featured in the Binding section of the New York Public Library's exhibit Ninety from the Nineties. Trisha Hammer designed a traveling case for this modern illustrated edition of Mark Twain's travel saga. |
