Maturin Murray Ballou spent most of his seventy-five years with a pen in his hand and a notebook on his lap. A prolific journalist and editor who contributed to and published many periodicals, including Flag of the Union, Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, Ballou's Dollar Monthly, and the Boston Globe, Ballou has also been called "the father of the American dime novel." Indeed, Ballou marketed his first three works of sensational fiction under the inventive heading "shilling novelettes," and they along with other novels solicited from writers such as J. H. Ingraham, Ann Stephens, and Justin Jones (Harry Hazel) became the first such series to be sold so cheaply in America.

Ballou's precedent-setting efforts in fiction and journalism have overshadowed another equally important manifestation of his compulsive writing endeavors: travel books. Like many literary, prosperous, or infirm Americans of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, Ballou traveled frequently abroad. Often in...