Wednesday, January 16 - Morning seminar.
Mark Twain and Isabella Lucy Bird
While RLS achieved fame before his travels to Hawaii and the South Pacific, Mark Twain counted his travel essays on Hawaii among his first successes. Living in California, his short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865) prompted a California newspaper to send him to Hawaii as a travel writer.
Letters from the Sandwich Islands (an earlier name for Hawaii) was an instant success that triggered Twain's career on the lecture circuit. Other travel books would follow, and then his long reign as America's chief humorist.
Isabella Lucy Bird was a very different travel writer. An explorer, naturalist, and travel writer, she was the Victorian woman who set out on the most daring travels. Her travel writing was widely known, especially her journeys to remote parts of Asia.
But an early book The Hawaiian Archepelago (1875) brought her early fame.
Twain and Bird were very different personalities with distinct storytelling styles. We will let the sit side by side and spin their tales for us this morning.