Samuel Clemens left Hannibal for more promising St. Louis in 1853, where he continued to work in the printing trade. In his notebook from 1855, he mentioned how he was reading George Sumner Weaver’s phrenology book. He was so enthralled with it that he copied parts and the skull diagram into his notebook. In 1857, he became a riverboat pilot, a far more exciting and lucrative job. When the Civil War ended river traffic from the North to New Orleans, he headed west with his older brother, now secretary for the Nevada territory. He now began to write for local newspapers, presenting himself as “Mark Twain.” He next tried mining and writing in California, where his hilarious jumping frog story from 1865 was his first nationally acclaimed piece. It led to commissions for pieces on the people and places he would now see, including Hawaii, Europe, and the Middle East. He would present some of his experiences in his travel books, including The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Roughing It. He used phrenological terms, concepts, and portraits in these works, even poking phrenological fun at himself. He did not, however, denigrate phrenology or the head readers in these works.

Mark Twain’s first nationally successful book was The Innocents Abroad, a travel book that recounted his 1867 trip to Europe and the Holy Land, a huge best seller that made satiric comment on both the Old World and America, a combination of humor and straight description. Twain drew on the emerging tradition of American travel writing, often skewering the tradition and the form, but also helping its further development. Travel writing runs throughout Twain’s career, including Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, Life on the Mississippi, and Following the Equator. In his time, Twain was more often considered and celebrated as a travel writer than a writer of fiction.