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Roughing It

 

 
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Roughing It is a book of semi-autobiographical travel literature
Travel literature

Travel literature is travel writing of literature value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author tourism a place for the pleasure of travel....
 written by American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 humorist Mark Twain
Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an United Statesmerican author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer....
. It was written during 1870–71 and published in 1872 as a prequel to his first book Innocents Abroad
Innocents Abroad

file:Mark Twain - The Innocents Abroad.jpgThe Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress was published by United States author Mark Twain in 1869....
. This book tells of Twain's adventures prior to his pleasure cruise related in Innocents Abroad.

Roughing It follows the travels of young Mark Twain through the Wild West during the years 1861–1867.






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Roughing It is a book of semi-autobiographical travel literature
Travel literature

Travel literature is travel writing of literature value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author tourism a place for the pleasure of travel....
 written by American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 humorist Mark Twain
Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an United Statesmerican author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer....
. It was written during 1870–71 and published in 1872 as a prequel to his first book Innocents Abroad
Innocents Abroad

file:Mark Twain - The Innocents Abroad.jpgThe Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress was published by United States author Mark Twain in 1869....
. This book tells of Twain's adventures prior to his pleasure cruise related in Innocents Abroad.

Roughing It follows the travels of young Mark Twain through the Wild West during the years 1861–1867. After a brief stint as a Confederate
Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America formed as the government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven Southern United States U.S. state of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S....
 cavalry militiaman, he joined his brother, who had been appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory
Nevada Territory

Nevada Territory was a historic, organized territory of the United States from March 2, 1861 until October 31, 1864, when it became Nevada, the 36th state....
, on a stagecoach
Stagecoach

A stagecoach is a type of four-wheeled closed coach for passengers and goods, strongly sprung and drawn by four horses, usually four-in-hand....
 journey west. Twain consulted his brother's diary to refresh his memory and borrowed heavily from his active imagination for many stories in the novel.

Roughing It illustrates many of Twain's early adventures, including a visit to Salt Lake City, gold
Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and atomic number 79. It is a highly sought-after precious metal, having been used as money, as a store of value, in jewelry, in sculpture, and for ornamentation since the beginning of recorded history....
 and silver
Silver

Silver is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal....
 prospecting
Prospecting

Prospecting is the physical search for minerals, fossils, precious metals or mineral specimens, and is also known as fossicking.Prospecting is synonymous in some ways with mineral exploration which is an organised, large scale and at least semi-scientific effort undertaken by mineral resource companies to find commercially viable ore deposi...
, real-estate speculation, and his beginnings as a writer.

In this memoir, readers can see examples of Twain's rough-hewn humor, which would become a staple of his writing in his later books, such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel written by Mark Twain and published in 1884. It is commonly regarded one of the Great American Novels, and is one of the first major American novels written in the vernacular, characterized by regionalism ....
, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, is a popular 1876 novel about a young boy growing up in the antebellum Southern United States on the Mississippi River in the fictional town of St....
, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is an 1889 in literature novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The work is a very early example of time travel in literature, anticipating by six years H....
.

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  • , text plus additional background material.