Released in 1897 by the American Publishing Co.			First edition had 712 pages and 193 illustrations.
Mark Twain's fifth, and final, travel book (preceded by The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, Life On The Mississippi).				Recounts Twain's experiences on a worldwide lecture tour in 1895-96, focusing primarily on India, Australia, and South Africa.
It is the only travel book in which the narrator identifies himself as Mark Twain; earlier narrators were heavily based on Twain, but also contained fictional elements in their characters.			Each chapter heading contains a maxim from Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar—a reference to the calendar maxims in the novel Pudd'nhead Wilson.

These were indeed wonderful people, the natives. They ought not to thave been wasted. They should have been crossed with the Whites. It would have improved the Whites and done the natives no harm.

But the natives were wasted, poor heroic wild creatures. They were gathered together in little settlements on neighboring islands, and paternally cared for by the Government, and instructed in religion, and deprived of tobacco, because the superintendent of the Sunday-school was not a smoker, and so considered smoking immoral.

The Natives were not used to clothers, and houses, and regular hours, and church, and school, and Sunday school, and work, and the other misplaced persecutions of civilization, and they pined for their lost home and their wild free life. Too late they repented that they had traded that heaven for this hell. They sat homesick on their alien crages, adn day by day gazed out through their tears over the sea with unappeasable longing toward the hazy bulk which was the specter of what had beeen their paradise; one by one their hearts broke and they died.

Twain wrote the book shortly after the death of his 24-year-old daughter Susy; he was greatly depressed, and admits to struggling for a lighthearted tone to the novel, although he was in hell at the time.
The first edition contained the first photographs used as illustrations in a Twain book.				Some rejected titles for the book were: Another Innocent Abroad, The Surviving Innocent Abroad, and The Latest Innocent Abroad.
A round-the-world lecture tour was arranged by Clemens to rescue him from his despondent financial situation; his publishing house recently collapsed, and the Paige Compositor, in which he invested heavily, was also a commercial failure.

Following The Equator is an account of Mark Twain's round-the-world lecture tour of 1895/96. The book opens in Paris, from which Twain sets out on his journey. In New York, his wife, Olivia, and daughter Clara decide to continue on the tour with Twain. The family sets out from New York accompanied by Major Pond, the tour manager for the North American leg. Following a stop in British Columbia, the travellers set sail on the Pacific Ocean.

After avoiding Hawaii due to a cholera epidemic, the ship lands at Suva, part of the Fiji Islands. After a short stay, Twain moves on to Australia, with his first stop in Sydney. Here he spends considerable space telling about Australian history, society, and people. A stop in Wagga-Wagga brings up the story of the Tichborne Claimant. In Melbourne, Twain relates the story of how Olivia once received a letter in which is discussed Twain's death on a lecture tour in Australia. The author makes numerous stops in mining regions of Australia, including Stawell, Ballarat, and Bendigo. In the latter stop, Twain encounters Mr. Blank, the sole member of the Mark Twain Club, of Corrigan Castle, Ireland. He is also the man who wrote the letter to Olivia about Twain's death.

The travellers next stop briefly at Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, and then move on to several towns in New Zealand. In Nelson, the group learns of the Maungatapu Murders, the sole event of historical importance to occur in the town. After a quick stop in Auckland, the capital, Twain visits Wanganui, where the Maori people and culture are discussed. The party returns to Australia to spend Christmas in Melbourne and New Year's at Adelaide, before setting sail for Ceylon, India.

The first stop in India is Bombay, which Twain finds to be a fabulous city of great contradictions: great wealth and extreme poverty, ornate palaces and ramshackle hovels. Twain gives a lengthy description of his interesting experiences while taking in Bombay, including a religious ceremony, the wedding of a 12-year-old girl, and a murder trial. The party takes the train to Baroda, where Twain rides an elephant. A longer train ride to Allahabad — the City of God — follows, where a religious ceremony is being held. Next stop is Benares, an important religious center, where they take a cruise on the Ganges. The journey through India continues, with stops in Calcutta, Darjeeling, and numerous other cities. At this point, Twain relates the history of the Great Mutiny of 1857, in which the Indian people revolted against the British.

Upon leaving India, the party heads for Durban, South Africa, after a brief stop at Mauritius and Mozambique. Twain launches into a lengthy explanation of the political and military problems of the Transvaal Reformers. He makes repeated negative references to Cecil Rhodes, a British industrialist who amassed great power and wealth in South Africa. Brief stops at Johannesburg, Cape Town, and other towns round out the relatively brief South Africa portion of the book. The lecture tour here ends, and the travellers head back to Southampton, England.