Roughing It: The Works of Mark Twain

Roughing It is Twain's humorous account of his years in the American West in the early 1860s. It begins with a stagecoach journey across the plains with his brother, then follows his adventures in Nevada silver mining, in Virginia City journalism, and on a trip to Hawaii.

Mixing real events with exaggeration and tall tales, Twain presents himself as a greenhorn learning hard lessons about mining fever, frontier life and human gullibility. The book shows the development of his comic voice before his famous novels.