1869-1870

Nov. 1  Pittsburg, Pa.
Nov. 9  Providence, R.I.
Nov. 10 Boston, Mass.
Nov. 11 Charlestown, Mass.
Nov. 13 Norwich, Conn.
Nov. 15 Clinton, Mass.
Nov. 16 Holyoke, Mass.
Nov. 19 Jamaica Plain, Mass.
Nov. 23 Hartford, Conn.
Nov. 29 Newton, Mass.
Nov. 30 Thompsonville, Conn.
Dec. 1  Brooklyn, N.Y.
Dec. 3  Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Dec. 7  Philadelphia, Pa.
Dec. 8  Washington, D.C.
Dec. 9  Germantown, Pa.
Dec. 10 Mount Vernon, N.Y.
Dec. 11 West Meriden, Conn.
Dec. 13 New Britain, Conn.
Dec. 14 Warren, R.I.
Dec. 15 Pawtucket, R.I.
Dec. 16 Waltham, Mass.
Dec. 20 Canton, Mass.
Dec. 21 Hudson, Mass.
Dec. 22 Portland, Maine
Dec. 23 Rockport, Mass.
Dec. 24 Slatersville, R.I.
Dec. 27 New Haven, Conn.
Dec. 28 Trenton, N.J.
Dec. 29 Newark, N.J.
Dec. 30 Wilkes-Barre, Penn.
Dec. 31 Williamsport, Penn.
Jan. 4  Owego, N.Y.
Jan. 6  Amenia, N.Y.
Jan. 7  Cohoes, N.Y.
Jan. 10 Albany, N.Y.
Jan. 11 West Troy, N.Y.
Jan. 12 Rondout, N.Y.
Jan. 13 Cambridge, N.Y.
Jan. 14 Utica, N.Y.
Jan. 15 Oswego, N.Y.
Jan. 17 Baldwinsville, N.Y.
Jan. 18 Buffalo, N.Y.
Jan. 19 Fredonia, N.Y.
Jan. 20 Hornellsville, N.Y.
Jan. 21 Jamestown, N.Y.

The schedule at left may contain errors. It has been compiled from a number of sources -- most importantly, Lorch's Trouble Begins at Eight and Fatout's Mark Twain on the Lecture Circuit, but also Mark Twain's Letters (ed. A.B. Paine), The Love Letters of Mark Twain (ed. Dixon Wecter), and Mark Twain's Letters to Mrs. Fairbanks (ed. Wecter). It was then checked against the schedule printed in an appendix to Mark Twain's Letters, Vol. 3 (ed. Victor Fischer & Michael B. Frank).

The schedule is designed to allow you to join the tour in two different ways. When a date on the list appears as an active link, clicking on it will take you to an excerpt from a letter by MT about that performance. (Unless otherwise specified, the letters are to Olivia Langdon, whom he married as soon as the tour ended.) When a city name appears as an active link, it will take you to a local review (or reviews) of that performance. (Like all the reviews in this archive, these lecture reviews are searchable.)

This was MT's second lecture tour in the east. He didn't make up his mind to do it until September, and initially his topic was announced as "Curiosities of California." By the time he began the tour in Pittsburg, however, he'd decided to use a revised version of the lecture derived from his 1866 newspaper letters from Hawaii: "Our Fellow Savages of the Sandwich Islands." This was the lecture he'd used in 1866 when he first began to lecture professionally in the west, and given in New York in 1867 when he first came east.

Most of the tour's 46 performances were in the northeast. He lectured in more major cities than he had the year before, including for the first time in Boston. To judge from his letters to Livy, often written right before or right after an evening's show, he was less enthusiastic about his work, but almost everywhere his performances were well-attended and well-received.

He hated Jamestown, instructing his agent, James Redpath, never to book him there again. He liked the audience in Fredonia so much that he decided it was the place his mother should move to when she later came east.