INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF THE GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY, ANTIQUITIES , AND INHABITANTS OF THESE COUNTRIES , THE PENINSULA OF SINAI, EDOM, AND THE SYRIAN DESERT ; WITH DETAILED DESCRIPTIONS OF JERUSALEM, PETRA, DAMASCUS , AND PALMYRA.
Edited by Josias Leslie Porter ( 1823-1889). 2 vols. London: John Murray, 1858. [New and Revised Edition issued in 1868.]
Clemens's entries in Notebook 9 (1867) suggest his familiarity with the first edition of this work. As a matter of fact, Clemens probably consulted Murray's Handbooks regarding most of the countries through which the Quaker City pilgrims traveled (N&J 1: 380-452). Leon Dickinson—“Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad” (1945)—recognized and documented Twain's dependence on Murray's guidebook (Dickinson credited the editor of the Handbook, Porter, rather than John Murray), particularly in Chapters 41, 49, and 53 of The Innocents Abroad (1869). Subsequently Dewey Ganzel’s “Samuel Clemens, Guidebooks and Innocents Abroad” (1965), pp. 78-83, and Mark Twain Abroad (1968), pp. 219-22, 266-271, revealed Twain's indebtedness more specifically. Robert H. Hirst informed me, however, that neither Dickinson nor Ganzel took into account the extent to which David Austin Randall's The Handwriting of God in Egypt, Sinai, and the Holy Land quoted from the text of Murray's Handbook, thus presenting an important alternate source.
Robert H. Hirst, “Making of The Innocents Abroad’ (1975)