[4] Mark Twain's journey aboard the Quaker City was funded by the Alta California newspaper in exchange for fifty articles documenting his trip.

Twain restructured and expanded upon the letters he had originally written for the Alta California to write The Innocents Abroad; adjusting his style by minimizing slang and vulgar language to cater to a broader, national readership.

[5] The Innocents Abroad presents itself as an ordinary travel book based on an actual voyage in a retired Civil War ship, the USS Quaker City.

In particular, he lampooned William Cowper Prime's Tent Life in the Holy Land for its overly sentimental prose and its often violent encounters with native inhabitants.

Disillusioned, he writes, "If all the poetry and nonsense that have been discharged upon the fountains and the bland scenery of this region were collected in a book, it would make a most valuable volume to burn.

"[6] This equivocal reaction to the religious history the narrator encounters may be magnified by the prejudices of the time, as the United States was still primarily a Protestant nation at that point.

The PBS series Great Performances, in 1983, broadcast a television movie adaptation of The Innocents Abroad, starring Craig Wasson, David Ogden Stiers, Gigi Proietti, and Brooke Adams, directed by Luciano Salce.