Mark Twain's New York
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A walking tour of Mark Twain
landmarks in Manhattan
More than a hundred years after his death, Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) is still our nation's best-known and most beloved author. But few people, even among his admirers, are aware of Twain's complex, nearly lifelong relationship with New York City — a relationship that would prove central to his development as a writer as well as to his personal and family life.
To discover for yourself the great humorist's many links with New York, join writer and Twain scholar Peter Salwen for this 90-minute walking tour that highlights nearly two dozen fascinating yet little-known Mark Twain sites in SoHo and Greenwich Village. Along the way you'll also learn the long-hidden true story of how Sam Clemens actually came by his famous pen name. (Hint: it involves another of Clemens's New York City connections.)
Our next tour will start at 10 am on November 19, 2017, marking the exact time and date, 150 years ago, when a large party of well-heeled American tourists, mostly from New York and Brooklyn, returned to New York on the steamship Quaker City after a five-month pleasure excursion through Europe and "The Holy Land." Twain's hilarious write-up of their tour, The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress, was a breakthrough best-seller that elevated him overnight to worldwide and enduring fame.
He claimed to be (and probably was) the "most conspicuous person on the planet": Mark Twain on Fifth Avenue with his daughter Clara Clemens, clearly enjoying the attention of their fellow New Yorkers.
Our Tour
“Mark Twain’s New York” is a unique 90-minute walking tour, created and led since 1985 by writer and Mark Twain expert Peter Salwen. It starts in Lower Manhattan, where Twain published his first book and met his future wife in 1867, and ends with a look at the Greenwich Village homes he occupied in the early 1900s. In between you'll visit over a dozen other places where Mark Twain lived, visited, did business and generally made himself, in his own words, “the most conspicuous person on the planet.”
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A walking tour of Mark Twain
landmarks in Manhattan