Mark Twain's third travel book, A Tramp Abroad was intended as a unofficial "sequel" to The Innocents Abroad, in which the same unnamed narrator makes a return trip to Europe.			The first edition was 631 pages long, and had 328 illustrations; a running gag throughout the book is the incorporation of Twain's own crude drawings, intended to show his progress in learning about art, one of the intended reasons for the narrator's journey.
Clemens and his family sailed to Germany in April 1878 for the purpose of writing this book; Clemens wanted to get out of Hartford because of the high expenses of their lifestyle.				The family stayed in Europe for 16 months, but the book covers just the first 5 or so months of the visit.
A strange mixture of styles is incorporated in A Tramp Abroad, including American and German folklore, satire, journalism, poetry, and even four facetious recipes.			The character of Harris is inspired by Joseph Twitchell, Clemens' real-life travel companion at the time.

About the middle of the afternoon the seventeen guides called a halt and held a consultation. After consulting an hour they said their first suspicion remained intact,—that is to say, they believed they were lost. I asked if they did not know it? No, they said, they couldn't absolutely know whether they were lost or not, because none of them had ever been in that part of the country before. They had a strong instinct that they were lost, but they had no proofs,—except that they did not know where they were. They had met no tourists for some time, and they considered that a suspicious sign.

But when the danger was most imminent, we were saved in a mysterious way. A mule which had attracted attention from the beginning by its disposition to experiment, tried to eat a five-pound can of nitro-glycerine. This happened right along-side the rock. The explosion threw us all to the ground, and covered us with dirt and debris....However, we were grateful, for the rock was gone. Its place was occupied by a new cellar, about thirty feet across, by fifteen feet deep. The explosion was heard as far as Zermatt; and an hour and a half afterward, many citizens of that town were knocked down and quite seriously injured by descending portions of mule meat, frozen solid.

A Tramp Abroad concerns the narrator's (presumably Twain's) excursion through Europe "on foot." A1 running gag throughout the book, however, is that the narrator almost never goes anywhere on foot, if there is another conveyance available. Along with his agent, Harris, the narrator spends most of the book in Germany and in the Swiss Alps.

The first part concerns the narrator's stay in Heidleberg, home of the famous university. Here he describes student life, including a remarkable description of the dueling societies on campus. Following a trip to Heilbron, the narrator and Harris, along with several others, raft down the Neckar River back to Heidelberg. It is on this voyage that Twain relates several German legends.

After touring the Black Forest, the two protagonists visit Switzerland. Long portions of the book describe the hiking expeditions that the two undertake near the Matterhorn, the Jungfrau, and the Riffelberg. Wrapping up his stay in Switzerland, the narrator and Harris visit Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc, before finishing up their Swiss stay in Geneva.

The final three chapters of the book concern a quick run through Milan and Venice. Five lengthy appendixes are included at the end, including the well-known The Awful German Language.