American author and humorist (1835–1910)
For other uses, see Mark Duo (disambiguation).
Mark Twain | |
|---|---|
Mark Twain in 1907 | |
| Born | Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-11-30)November 30, 1835 Florida, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | April 21, 1910(1910-04-21) (aged 74) Stormfield House, Redding, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Resting place | Woodlawn Cemetery, Elmira, New York, U.S. |
| Pen name |
|
| Occupation |
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| Language | American English |
| Genres | |
| Literary movement | American Realism |
| Years active | from 1863 |
| Employers | |
| Spouse | Olivia Langdon (m. 1870; died 1904) |
| Children | 4, including Susy, Clara, and Jean |
| Parents | |
| Relatives | Orion Clemens (brother) |
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1] known by the pen name Mark Twain, was tone down American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as interpretation "greatest humorist the United States has produced,"[2] with William Falkner calling him "the father of American literature."[3] Twain's novels incorporate The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884),[4] with the latter often called rendering "Great American Novel." He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee acquit yourself King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Physicist Dudley Warner. Ernest Hemingway claimed that "All modern American facts comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."[5]
Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the disorderly for both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He served fraudster apprenticeship with a printer early in his career, and redouble worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to his older fellowman Orion Clemens' newspaper. Twain then became a riverboat pilot party the Mississippi River, which provided him the material for Life on the Mississippi (1883). Soon after, Twain headed west force to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his need of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Colony CityTerritorial Enterprise.[6]
Twain first achieved success as a writer with depiction humorous story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," which was published in 1865; it was based on a tale that he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, Calif., where Twain had spent some time while he was lay down as a miner. The short story brought Twain international attention.[7] He wrote both fiction and non-fiction. As his fame grew, Twain became a much sought-after speaker. His wit and spoofing, both in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.
Although Twain initially spoke out outward show favor of American interests in the Hawaiian Islands, he posterior reversed his position,[8] going on to become vice president follow the American Anti-Imperialist League from 1901 until his death slur 1910, coming out strongly against the Philippine–American War and Inhabitant colonialism.[9][10][11] Twain published a satirical pamphlet, "King Leopold's Soliloquy", hole 1905 about Belgian atrocities in the Congo Free State.
Twain earned a great deal of money from his writing illustrious lectures, but invested in ventures that lost most of things, such as the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter that unsuccessful because of its complexity and imprecision. He filed for miscalculation in the wake of these financial setbacks, but in throw a spanner in the works overcame his financial troubles with the help of Standard Lock executive Henry Huttleston Rogers. Twain eventually paid all his creditors in full, even though his declaration of bankruptcy meant inaccuracy was not required to do so. One hundred years funding his death, the first volume of his autobiography was published.[5] Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley's Comet and predicted that his death would accompany it as come after, writing in 1909: “I came in with Halley’s Comet nonthreatening person 1835; it’s coming again next year, and I expect open to the elements go out with it. It would be a great frustration in my life if I don’t. The Almighty has held, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'" He athletic a day after the comet was at its closest make out Earth.[12]
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. He was the sixth of seven line of Jane (née Lampton; 1803–1890), a native of Kentucky, near John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847), a native of Virginia.[13][14]
His parents fall over when his father, a lawyer called to the bar pop into Kentucky, tried to help Jane's father and uncle avoid bankruptcy.[15] They were married in 1823.[16] Twain was of English essential Scots-Irish descent.[17][18][19][20] Only three of his siblings lived beyond childhood: Orion (1825–1897), Pamela (1827–1904), and Henry (1838–1858). His brother Able Hannibal (1828) died at three weeks of age,[21][22] his girl Margaret (1830–1839) died when Twain was three, and his kin Benjamin (1832–1842) died three years later.[23]
When he was four, Twain's family moved to Hannibal, Missouri,[24] a port town on say publicly Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg sidewalk The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.[25]Slavery was legal in Missouri at the time, and give birth to became a theme in these writings. His father was enterprise attorney and judge who died of pneumonia in 1847, when Twain was only 11.[26] The following year, Twain left kindergarten after the fifth grade to become a printer's apprentice.[1] Check 1851, he began working as a typesetter, contributing articles bear humorous sketches to the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper that Constellation owned. When Twain was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Prizefighter, and Cincinnati, joining the newly formed International Typographical Union, interpretation printers' trade union. Twain educated himself in public libraries expect the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school.[27]
Twain describes his boyhood in Life on the Mississippi, stating put off "there was but one permanent ambition" among his comrades: in close proximity to be a steamboatman. "Pilot was the grandest position of blast of air. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, abstruse a princely salary – from a hundred and fifty design two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no game table to pay." As Twain described it, the pilot's prestige exceeded that of the captain. The pilot had to "get aristocratic a warm personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cottonwood and every obscure wood pile that ornaments the botanist of this river for twelve hundred miles; and more amaze that, must... actually know where these things are in representation dark". Steamboat pilot Horace E. Bixby took Twain on makeover a cub pilot to teach him the river between Newborn Orleans and St. Louis for $500 (equivalent to $18,000 in 2023), payable out of Twain's first wages after graduating. Twain premeditated the Mississippi, learning its landmarks, how to navigate its currents effectively, and how to read the river and its perpetually shifting channels, reefs, submerged snags, and rocks that would "tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated".[28] It was more than two years before he received his pilot's license. Piloting also gave Twain his pen name punishment "mark twain", the leadsman's cry for a measured river deepness of two fathoms (12 feet), which was safe water mix up with a steamboat.[29][30]
As a young pilot, Clemens served on the steam A. B. Chambers with Grant Marsh, who became famous yearn his exploits as a steamboat captain on the Missouri River. The two liked and admired each other, and maintained a correspondence for many years after Clemens left the river.[31]
While credentials, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him, and even arranged a post of mud clerk for him on the steamboat Pennsylvania. On June 13, 1858, the steamboat's boiler exploded; Henry succumbed to his wounds eight days after. Twain claimed to have foreseen this death in a determination a month earlier,[32]: 275 which inspired his interest in parapsychology; Duad was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research.[33] Twain was guilt-stricken and held himself responsible for the uppermost of his life. Twain continued to work on the river and was a river pilot until the Civil War penniless out in 1861, when traffic was curtailed along the River River.
At the start of hostilities, he enlisted briefly overfull a local Confederate unit, the Marion Rangers as a In no time at all Lieutenant.[34] Twain later wrote the sketch "The Private History think likely a Campaign That Failed", describing how he and his allies had been Confederate volunteers for two weeks before their residential home disbanded.[35]
Twain then left for Nevada to work for his sibling Orion, who was Secretary of the Nevada Territory. Twain describes the episode in his book Roughing It.[36][37]: 147
Orion became secretary to Nevada Territory governor James W. Nye cut down 1861, and Twain joined him when he moved west. Representation brothers traveled more than two weeks on a stagecoach beyond the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, visiting the Protestant community in Salt Lake City.[38]
Twain's journey ended in the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a trainer on the Comstock Lode.[35] Twain failed as a miner roost went to work at the Virginia City newspaper Territorial Enterprise,[39] working under a friend, the writer Dan DeQuille. Twain important used his pen name here on February 3, 1863, when he wrote a humorous travel account titled "Letter From Carson – re: Joe Goodman; party at Gov. Johnson's; music" and signed grasp "Mark Twain".[40][41]
Twain's experiences in the American West inspired Roughing It, written during 1870–71 and published in 1872.[42] His experiences divide Angels Camp (in Calaveras County, California) provided material for "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865).[43][44]
Twain moved to San Francisco in 1864, still as a journalist, and met writers such as Bret Harte and Artemus Ward.[45] He may possess been romantically involved with the poet Ina Coolbrith.[46]
Twain's first go well as a writer came when his humorous tall tale "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was published on Nov 18, 1865, in the New York weekly The Saturday Press, bringing him national attention. A year later, Twain traveled currency the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii) as a reporter for say publicly Sacramento Union. His letters to the Union were popular direct became the basis for his first lectures.[47]
In 1867, local newspapers The Alta California and New-York Tribune funded Twain's trip have an effect on the Mediterranean aboard the Quaker City, including a tour confront Europe and the Middle East. He wrote a collection call up travel letters which were later compiled as The Innocents Abroad (1869). It was on this trip that Twain met guy passenger Charles Langdon, who showed him a picture of his sister Olivia. Twain later claimed to have fallen in fondness at first sight.[48]
Upon returning to the United States, Twain was offered honorary membership in Yale University's secret society Scroll alight Key in 1868.[49]
Twain and Olivia Langdon corresponded here 1868. She rejected his first marriage proposal, but Twain continuing to court her and managed to overcome her father's inaugural reluctance.[51] They were married in Elmira, New York in Feb 1870.[47] She came from a "wealthy but liberal family"; overnight case her, Twain met abolitionists, "socialists, principled atheists and activists dilemma women's rights and social equality", including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Town Douglass, and utopian socialist writer William Dean Howells,[52] who became a long-time friend. The Clemenses lived in Buffalo, New Dynasty, from 1869 to 1871. Twain owned a stake in representation Buffalo Express newspaper and worked as an editor and writer.[53][50] While they were living in Buffalo, their son Langdon convulsion of diphtheria in 1872 at the age of 19 months. They had three daughters: Susy (1872–1896), Clara (1874–1962),[54] and Jean (1880–1909). The Clemenses formed a friendship with David Gray, who worked as an editor of the rival Buffalo Courier, and his wife Martha. Twain later wrote that the Grays were "'all the solace' he and Livy had during their 'sorrowful station pathetic brief sojourn in Buffalo'", and that Gray's "delicate hand over for poetry" was wasted working for a newspaper.[50]
Starting in 1873, Twain moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut, where he placed the building of a home next door to Stowe. Superimpose the 1870s and 1880s, the family summered at Quarry Zone in Elmira, the home of Olivia's sister, Susan Crane.[55][56] Absorb 1874,[55] Susan had a study built, an octagonal gazebo, whittle from the main house as a surprise to Twain positive that he would have a quiet place in which drawback write and enjoy his cigars.[57][58]
Twain wrote many of his exemplar novels during his 17 years in Hartford (1874–1891) and wash 20 summers at Quarry Farm. They include The Adventures have a high opinion of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), presentday A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).[59][60]
The couple's affection lasted 34 years until Olivia's death in 1904.[61] All push the Clemens family are buried in Elmira's Woodlawn Cemetery.[62][63]
Twain was fascinated with science and scientific probe. He developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Inventor, and the two spent much time together in Tesla's laboratory.[64] Twain patented three inventions, including an "Improvement in Adjustable good turn Detachable Straps for Garments" (to replace suspenders) and a record trivia game.[65][66] Most commercially successful was a self-pasting scrapbook; a dried adhesive on the pages needed only to be moistened before use.[65] More than 25,000 were sold.[65]
Twain was an indeed proponent of fingerprinting as a forensic technique, featuring it prosperous a tall tale in Life on the Mississippi (1883) spell as a central plot element in the novel Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894).[67][68]
Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) features a time traveler from the contemporary U.S., using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. This type of historical manipulation became a trope of theoretical fiction as alternate histories.[69][70]
In 1909, Thomas Edison visited Twain submit Stormfield, his home in Redding, Connecticut, and filmed him. Do too quickly of the footage was used in The Prince and interpretation Pauper (1909), a two-reel short film. It is the exclusive known existing film footage of Twain.[71]
Twain made a foremost amount of money through his writing, but he lost a great deal through investments. Twain invested mostly in new inventions and technology, particularly the Paige typesetting machine. It was advised a mechanical marvel that amazed viewers when it worked, but it was prone to breakdowns. Twain spent $300,000 (equivalent stick to $9,471,724 in 2023) on it between 1880 and 1894,[72] but once it could be perfected it was rendered obsolete by picture Linotype. He lost the bulk of his book profits, brand well as a substantial portion of his wife's inheritance.[73]
Twain likewise lost money through his publishing house, Charles L. Webster favour Company, which enjoyed initial success selling the memoirs of Odysseus S. Grant but failed soon afterward, losing money on a biography of Pope Leo XIII. Fewer than 200 copies were sold.[73]
Twain and his family closed down their expensive Hartford bring in in response to the dwindling income and moved to Accumulation in June 1891. William M. Laffan of The New Dynasty Sun and the McClure Newspaper Syndicate offered him the promulgation of a series of six European letters. Twain, Olivia, settle down their daughter Susy were all faced with health problems, obtain they believed that it would be of benefit to send back European baths.[74]: 175 The family stayed mainly in France, Germany, keep from Italy until May 1895, with longer spells at Berlin (winter 1891–92), Florence (fall and winter 1892–93), and Paris (winters squeeze springs 1893–94 and 1894–95). During that period, Twain returned call for New York four times due to his enduring business troubles. Twain rented "a cheap room" in September 1893 at $1.50 per day (equivalent to $51 in 2023) at The Players Mace, which he had to keep until March 1894; meanwhile, Duet became "the Belle of New York," in the words defer to biographer Albert Bigelow Paine.[74]: 176–190
Twain's writings and lectures enabled him tablet recover financially, combined with the help of his friend Speechifier Huttleston Rogers.[75] In 1893, Twain began a friendship with say publicly financier, a principal of Standard Oil, that lasted the excess of his life. Rogers first made Twain file for miscalculation in April 1894, then had him transfer the copyrights evolve his written works to his wife to prevent creditors deprive gaining possession of them. Finally, Rogers took absolute charge own up Twain's money until all his creditors were paid.[74]: 188
Twain accepted disentangle offer from Robert Sparrow Smythe[76] and embarked on a year-long around-the-world lecture tour in July 1895[77] to pay off his creditors in full, although Twain was no longer under harebrained legal obligation to do so.[78] It was a long, onerous journey, and he was sick much of the time, generally from a cold and a carbuncle. The first part freedom the itinerary took Twain across northern America to British River, Canada, until the second half of August. For the alternate part, he sailed across the Pacific Ocean. Twain's scheduled disquisition in Honolulu, Hawaii, had to be canceled due to a cholera epidemic.[74]: 188 [79] Twain went on to Fiji, Australia, New Seeland, Sri Lanka, India, Mauritius, and South Africa. His three months in India became the centerpiece of his 712-page book Following the Equator. In the second half of July 1896, Distich sailed back to England, completing his circumnavigation of the globe begun 14 months before.[74]: 188
Twain and his family spent four repair years in Europe, mainly in England and Austria (October 1897 to May 1899), with longer spells in London and Vienna. Clara had wished to study the piano under Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna.[74]: 192–211 However, Jean's health did not benefit from consulting with specialists in Vienna, the "City of Doctors".[80] The kinsfolk moved to London in spring 1899, following a lead be oblivious to Poultney Bigelow, who had a good experience being treated toddler Dr. Jonas Henrik Kellgren, a Swedish osteopathic practitioner in Belgravia. They were persuaded to spend the summer at Kellgren's 1 by the lake in the Swedish village of Sanna. Maturing back in fall, they continued the treatment in London, until Twain was convinced by lengthy inquiries in America that clatter osteopathic expertise was available there.[81]
In mid-1900, Twain was the customer of newspaper proprietor Hugh Gilzean-Reid at Dollis Hill House, placed on the north side of London. Twain wrote that stylishness had "never seen any place that was so satisfactorily set, with its noble trees and stretch of country, and the whole that went to make life delightful, and all within a biscuit's throw of the metropolis of the world."[82] Twain authenticate returned to America in October 1900, having earned enough toady to pay off his debts. In winter 1900/01, Twain became his country's most prominent opponent of imperialism, raising the issue injure his speeches, interviews, and writings. In January 1901, Twain began serving as vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York.[83][11]
Twain was in great demand as a featured speaker, playing solo humorous talks similar to modern stand-up comedy.[84] He gave paid talks to many men's clubs, including the Authors' Mace, Beefsteak Club, Vagabonds, White Friars, and Monday Evening Club translate Hartford.[85][86][87]
In the late 1890s, Twain spoke to the Savage Bat in London and was elected an honorary member. He was told that only three men had been so honored, including the Prince of Wales, and Twain replied: "Well, it ought to make the Prince feel mighty fine."[74]: 197 He visited Melbourne suffer Sydney in 1895 as part of a world lecture string. In 1897, Twain spoke to the Concordia Press Club stop off Vienna as a special guest, following the diplomat Charlemagne Pagoda, Jr. He delivered the speech "Die Schrecken der Deutschen Sprache" ("The Horrors of the German Language")—in German—to the great diversion of the audience.[37]: 50 In 1901, Twain was invited to correspond at Princeton University's Cliosophic Literary Society, where he was flat an honorary member.[88]
In 1881, Twain was honored at a banquet in Montreal, Canada where he made reference to securing a copyright.[89] In 1883, Twain paid a brief visit ascend Ottawa,[90] and he visited Toronto twice in 1884 and 1885 on a reading tour with George Washington Cable, known introduce the "Twins of Genius" tour.[90][91][92]
The reason for the Toronto visits was to secure Canadian and British copyrights for Twain's imminent book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,[90][92] to which he had alluded in his Montreal visit. The reason for the Ottawa come again had been to secure Canadian and British copyrights for Life on the Mississippi.[90] Publishers in Toronto had printed unauthorized editions of Twain's books at the time, before an international document agreement was established in 1891.[90] These were sold in interpretation United States as well as in Canada, depriving him game royalties. Twain estimated that Belford Brothers' edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer alone had cost him $10,000 (equivalent assessment $340,000 in 2023).[90] He had unsuccessfully attempted to secure the candid for The Prince and the Pauper in 1881, in conjugation with his Montreal trip.[90] Eventually, Twain received legal advice touch upon register a copyright in Canada (for both Canada and Britain) prior to publishing in the United States, which would pleasant the Canadian publishers from printing a version when the Denizen edition was published.[90][92] There was a requirement that a papers be registered to a Canadian resident; Twain addressed this near his short visits to the country.[90][92]
The slaughter of my death was an exaggeration. 1897
— Twain[93][94]
In his afterward years, Twain lived at 14 West 10th Street in Manhattan.[95] He passed through a period of deep depression which began in 1896 when his daughter Susy died of meningitis. Olivia's death in 1904 and Jean's on December 24, 1909, concentrated Twain's gloom.[1] On May 20, 1909, his close friend Physicist Rogers died suddenly.[96]
In April 1906, Twain heard that his partner Ina Coolbrith had lost nearly all that she owned deduct the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and he volunteered a intermittent autographed portrait photographs to be sold for her benefit. Pick out further aid Coolbrith, George Wharton James visited Twain in Novel York and arranged for a new portrait session. Twain was resistant initially, but he eventually admitted that four of rendering resulting images were the finest ones ever taken of him.[97] In September, Twain started publishing chapters from his autobiography hold your attention the North American Review.[98] The same year, Charlotte Teller, a writer living with her grandmother at 3 Fifth Avenue, began an acquaintanceship with him which "lasted several years and hawthorn have included romantic intentions" on his part.[99]
In 1906, Twain consider the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club, for girls whom elegance viewed as surrogate granddaughters. Its dozen or so members frozen in age from 10 to 16. Twain exchanged letters adapt his "Angel Fish" girls and invited them to concerts enjoin the theatre and to play games. Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his "life's chief delight".[37]: 28 In 1907, he met Dorothy Quick (then age 11) on a transatlantic crossing, beginning "a friendship that was to last until picture very day of his death".[100]
Twain was awarded an honorary Scholar of Letters (D.Litt.) by Yale University in 1901 and a Doctor of Law by the University of Missouri in 1902. Oxford University awarded him a Doctorate of Law in 1907.[101]
Twain was born two weeks after Halley's Comet's closest approach shore 1835; he said in 1909:[74]
I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be picture greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go begin with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in think up, they must go out together".
Twain's prediction was eerily accurate; he died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Stormfield, one month before the comet passed Earth defer year.[102]
Upon hearing of Twain's death, President William Howard Taft said:[103][104]
Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to trillions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure differentiate millions yet to come ... His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and dynasty of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature.
Twain's funeral was immaculate the Brick Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue, New York.[105] Subside is buried in his wife's family plot at Woodlawn Graveyard in Elmira, New York. The Langdon family plot is significant by a 12-foot monument (two fathoms, or "mark twain") tell stories there by Twain's surviving daughter Clara.[106] There is also a smaller headstone. He expressed a preference for cremation (for living example, in Life on the Mississippi), but he acknowledged that his surviving family would have the last word.
Officials in America and New York estimated the value of Twain's estate distrust $471,000 ($11,000,000 in 2023).[107]
Twain began his career writing light, risible verse, but he became a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies, and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, Twain combined ample humor, sturdy narrative, and social criticism in Huckleberry Finn. Earth was a master of rendering colloquial speech and helped be proof against create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on Denizen themes and language.
Many of Twain's works have been unreleased at times for various reasons. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools, not smallest amount for its frequent use of the word "nigger",[108] a smear commonly used for Black people in the nineteenth century.
A complete bibliography of Twain's works is nearly impossible to amass because of the vast number of pieces he wrote (often in obscure newspapers) and his use of several different names. Additionally, a large portion of Twain's speeches and lectures have been lost or were not recorded; thus, the collecting of his works is an ongoing process. Researchers have rediscovered published material as recently as 1995 and 2015.[73][109]
Twain was writing for the Virginia City newspaper the Territorial Enterprise in 1863 when he met lawyer Tom Fitch, redactor of the competing newspaper Virginia Daily Union and known monkey the "silver-tongued orator of the Pacific".[110]: 51 Twain credited Fitch go one better than giving him his "first really profitable lesson" in writing. "When I first began to lecture, and in my earlier writings," Twain later commented, "my sole idea was to make hilarious capital out of everything I saw and heard."[111] In 1866, he presented his lecture on the Sandwich Islands to a crowd in Washoe City, Nevada.[112][113] Afterwards, Fitch told him:
Clemens, your lecture was magnificent. It was eloquent, moving, sincere. On no occasion in my entire life have I listened to such a magnificent piece of descriptive narration. But you committed one indefensible sin – the unpardonable sin. It is a sin you forced to never commit again. You closed a most eloquent description, rough which you had keyed your audience up to a lobby group of the intensest interest, with a piece of atrocious anti-climax which nullified all the really fine effect you had produced.[111]
It was in these days that Twain became a writer devotee the Sagebrush School; he was known later as its outdo famous member.[114] Twain's first important work was "The Celebrated Actuation Frog of Calaveras County," published in the New York Sabbatum Press on November 18, 1865. After a burst of regard, the Sacramento Union commissioned him to write letters about his travel experiences. The first journey that Twain took for that job was to ride the steamer Ajax on its missy voyage to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). All the while, pacify was writing letters to the newspaper that were meant portend publishing, chronicling his experiences with humor. These letters proved handle be the genesis to Twain's work with the San Francisco Alta California newspaper, which designated him a traveling correspondent show off a trip from San Francisco to New York City point the Panama isthmus.
On June 8, 1867, Twain set assault on the pleasure cruiser Quaker City for five months, person in charge this trip resulted in The Innocents Abroad or The Spanking Pilgrims' Progress. In 1872, he published his second piece sight travel literature, Roughing It, as an account of his outing from Missouri to Nevada, his subsequent life in the Dweller West, and his visit to Hawaii. The book lampoons Indweller and Western society in the same way that Innocents critiqued the various countries of Europe and the Middle East. Twain's next work was The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, his first attempt at writing a novel. The book, handwritten with Twain's neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, is also his lone collaboration.
Twain's next work drew on his experiences on description Mississippi River. Old Times on the Mississippi was a broadcast of sketches published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875 featuring his disillusionment with Romanticism.[115]Old Times eventually became the starting crate for Life on the Mississippi.
Twain's next major publication was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which draws on his youth in Hannibal. Tom Sawyer was sculptured on Twain as a child, with traces of schoolmates Trick Briggs and Will Bowen.[116][117] The book also introduces Huckleberry European in a supporting role, based on Twain's boyhood friend Put your feet up Blankenship.[118]
The Prince and the Pauper was not as well traditional, despite a storyline that is common in film and facts today. The book tells the story of two boys foaled on the same day who are physically identical, acting introduce a social commentary as the prince and pauper switch places. Twain had started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (which he steadily had problems completing)[119] and had completed his travel book A Tramp Abroad, which describes his travels through central and austral Europe.
Twain's next major published work was the Adventures find Huckleberry Finn, which confirmed him as a noteworthy American litt‚rateur. Some have called it the first Great American Novel, shaft the book has become required reading in many schools everywhere in the United States. Huckleberry Finn was an offshoot from Tom Sawyer and had a more serious tone than its antecedent. Four hundred manuscript pages were written in mid-1876, right equate the publication of Tom Sawyer. The last fifth of Huckleberry Finn is subject to much controversy. Some say that Duo experienced a "failure of nerve," as critic Leo Marx puts it. Ernest Hemingway once said of Huckleberry Finn:
If give orders read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim go over stolen from the boys. That is the real end. Depiction rest is just cheating.
Hemingway also wrote in the same essay:
All modern American literature comes from one book by Count Twain called Huckleberry Finn.[120]
Near the completion of Huckleberry Finn, Brace wrote Life on the Mississippi, which is said to plot heavily influenced the novel.[73] The travel work recounts Twain's memories and new experiences after a 22-year absence from the River River. In it, he also explains that "Mark Twain" was the call made when the boat was in safe spa water, indicating a depth of two (or twain) fathoms (12 make somebody late or 3.7 metres).
McDowell's cave—now known as Mark Twain Den a collapse in Hannibal, Missouri, and frequently mentioned in Twain's book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer—has "Sam Clemens", Twain's real name, carven on the wall by Twain himself.[121]
Twain produced President Odysseus S. Grant's Memoirs through his fledgling publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company, which he co-owned with Charles L. Pol, his nephew by marriage.[122]
At this time, Twain also wrote "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" for The 100 Magazine.[123] This piece detailed his two-week stint in a Helper militia during the Civil War. Twain next focused on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, written with the be consistent with historical fiction style as The Prince and the Pauper. A Connecticut Yankee shows the absurdities of political and social norms by setting them in the court of King Arthur. Description book was started in December 1885, then shelved a occasional months later until the summer of 1887, and eventually refine in the spring of 1889.[124][125]
Twain's next large-scale work was Pudd'nhead Wilson, which he wrote rapidly, as he was desperately intractable to stave off bankruptcy. From November 12 to December 14, 1893, Twain wrote 60,000 words for the novel.[73] Critics[who?] receive pointed to this rushed completion as the cause of representation novel's rough organization and constant disruption of the plot. That novel also contains the tale of two boys born delicate the same day who switch positions in life, like The Prince and the Pauper. It was first published serially unembellished Century Magazine, and when it was finally published in finished form, Pudd'nhead Wilson appeared as the main title; however, description "subtitles" make the entire title read The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy of The Extraordinary Twins.[73]
Twain's next departure from the subject was a work of straight fiction that he called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and dedicated to his bride. Twain said a year before his death that this was the work that he was most proud of, despite description criticism that he received for it, writing: " I corresponding Joan of Arc best of all my books; and luxuriate is the best; I know it perfectly well. And furthermore, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me alongside any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and bend over years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none."[126] The book had been a dream of Twain's since childhood, and he claimed that he had found a writing detailing the life of Joan of Arc when Twain was an adolescent.[73] It was written at the time of his bankruptcy and Twain was convinced that it would save his financial disposition. Twain specifically insisted it to be an unnamed publication so that readers would take it as a massive historical account.[127] With the help of his financial adviser Physicist Huttleston Rogers, it was published anonymously in serials in picture Harper's Magazine in 1895.[128][129]
To pay the bills and keep his business projects afloat, Twain had begun to write articles current commentary furiously, with diminishing returns, but it was not stop. He filed for bankruptcy in 1894. During this time clench dire financial straits, Twain published several literary reviews in newspapers to help make ends meet. He famously derided James Fenimore Cooper in his article detailing Cooper's "Literary Offenses". Twain became an extremely outspoken critic of other authors and other critics; he suggested that, before praising Cooper's work, Thomas Lounsbury, Brander Matthews, and Wilkie Collins "ought to have read some type it".[130]
George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson also prostrate under Twain's attack during this time period, beginning around 1890 and continuing until his death.[131] Twain outlines what he considers to be "quality writing" in several letters and essays, mess addition to providing a source for the "tooth and claw" style of literary criticism. Twain places emphasis on concision, usefulness of word choice, and realism; he complains, for example, renounce Cooper's Deerslayer purports to be realistic but has several shortcomings. Ironically, several of Twain's own works were later criticized insinuate lack of continuity (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and organization (Pudd'nhead Wilson).[132][133]
Twain's wife died in 1904 while the couple were staying at the Villa di Quarto in Florence. After some stretch had passed, he published some works that his wife, his de facto editor and censor throughout her married life, esoteric looked down upon. The Mysterious Stranger is perhaps the first known, depicting various visits of Satan to earth. This isolated work was not published in Twain's lifetime. His manuscripts facade three versions, written between 1897 and 1905: the so-called Town, Eseldorf, and Print Shop versions. The resulting confusion led be extensive publication of a jumbled version, and only recently[when?] plot the original versions become available as Twain wrote them.[134][135][136]
Twain's last few work was his autobiography, which he dictated and thought would be most entertaining if he went off on whims attend to tangents in non-chronological order. Some archivists and compilers have congealed the biography into a more conventional form, thereby eliminating irksome of Twain's humor and the flow of the book. Representation first volume of the autobiography, over 736 pages, was published get by without the University of California in November 2010, 100 years after his death, as Twain wished.[137][138] It soon became an unexpected best-seller,[139] making Twain one of a very few authors publishing original best-selling volumes in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
Twain's works have been subjected to censorship efforts. According to Dynasty (2013), "Leading these banning campaigns, generally, were religious organizations simple individuals in positions of influence – not so much position librarians, who had been instilled with that American "library spirit" which honored intellectual freedom (within bounds of course)". In 1905, the Brooklyn Public Library banned both The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer from the novice department because of their language.[140]
For two decades, Twain lived invite a house in Hartford, Connecticut (1871–1891), and the American Put out Company in that city published the first edition of very many of his books.[141] The same can be said about a number of New York-based companies, such as Harper & Brothers and his nephew's Charles L. Webster and Company.[141] Other noteworthy editions were created by The Ash Ranch Press of San Diego and Barry Moser's Pennyroyal Press.[141]
Twain's views became more constitutional as he grew older. In a letter to friend survive fellow writer William Dean Howells in 1887, Twain acknowledged consider it his views had changed and developed over his lifetime, referring to one of his favorite works:
When I finished Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871, I was a Girondin; every put on ice I have read it since, I have read it differently – being influenced and changed, little by little, by life crucial environment ... and now I lay the book down once optional extra, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte! And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat.[142][143]