A simple retelling of five stories by Mark Twain, in which he pokes fun at newspapers, Victorian manners, obedience to one's parents, the British, and perceptions of reality.
“More than 100 years after [Twain] wrote these stories, they remain not only remarkably funny but remarkably modern. . . . Ninety-nine years after his death, Twain still manages to get the last laugh.” — Vanity Fair Who Is Mark Twain? is a collection of twenty six wickedly funny, thought-provoking essays by Samuel Langhorne Clemens—aka Mark Twain—none of which have ever been published before. "You had better shove this in the stove," Mark Twain said at the top of an 1865 letter to his brother, "for I don't want any absurd ‘literary remains' and ‘unpublished letters of Mark Twain' published after I am planted." He was joking, of course. But when Mark Twain died in 1910, he left behind the largest collection of personal papers created by any nineteenth-century American author. Who Is Mark Twain? presents twenty-six wickedly funny, disarmingly relevant pieces by the American master—a man who was well ahead of his time.
Familiarity breeds contempt — and children." "When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear." "Heaven for climate. Hell for company." This attractive paperback gift edition of the renowned American humorist's epigrams and witticisms features hundreds of quips on life, love, history, culture, travel, and other topics from his fiction, essays, letters, and autobiography.
Mark Twain's life--one of the richest and raciest America has known--is delightfully portrayed in this mosaic of words and more than 600 pictures that capture the career of one of America's most colorful personalities. The words are Twain's own, taken from his writings--not only the autobiography but also his letters, notebooks, newspaper reporting, sketches, travel pieces, and fiction. The illustrations provide the perfect counterpoint to Twain's text. Presented in the hundreds of photos, prints, drawings, cartoons, and paintings is Twain himself, from the apprentice in his printer's cap to the dying world-famous figure finishing his last voyage in a wheelchair. Mark Twain Himself: A Pictorial Biography will not only inform and entertain the casual reader but will provide a valuable resource to scholars and teachers of Twain as well.
No library's complete without the classics! This edition collects some of the most popular works of legendary humorist and novelist Mark Twain. Mark Twain wrote his greatest works more than one hundred years ago, but he's never far from the minds of Americans. Whether it's the new, complete, and uncensored version of his autobiography hitting bestseller lists or the removal of certain controversial language from one of his novels, his name and his legacy remain a topic of conversation--and undoubtedly will for years to come. There's no better time to appreciate his stories, or read them for the very first time. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson are collected in this timeless and elegant book. Part of the Canterbury Classics series, Mark Twain features an introduction by a renowned Twain scholar that will enlighten new and familiar readers alike. This edition of Mark Twain is a treasure to enjoy forever--just like the writing of Twain himself!
This Excellent Collection brings together Mark Twain's longer, major books and a fine selection of shorter pieces and Science-Fiction Books. This Books created and collected in Mark Twain's Most important Works illuminate the life and work of one of the most individual writers of the XX century - a man who elevated political writing to an art. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name "Mark Twain", was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," and William Faulkner called him "the father of American literature". His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter often called "The Great American Novel". Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.[5] His humorous story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", was published in 1865, based on a story that he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. The short story brought international attention and was even translated into French.[6] His wit and satire, in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty. Twain earned a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, but he invested in ventures that lost most of it—such as the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its complexity and imprecision. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of these financial setbacks, but in time overcame his financial troubles with the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers. He eventually paid all his creditors in full, even though his bankruptcy relieved him of having to do so. Twain was born shortly after an appearance of Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" as well; he died the day after the comet made its closest approach to the Earth. This Collection included: TOM SAWYER SERIES · The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn · The Adventures of Tom Sawyer · Tom Sawyer Abroad · Tom Sawyer, Detective · A Tramp Abroad ALONZO FITZ AND OTHER STORIES AUTOBIOGRAPHIES LETTERS ESSAYS AND NOVELS · A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court · In Defense of Harriet Shelley · A Double Barrelled Detective Story · Editorial Wild Oats · Essays on Paul Bourget · Eve's Diary · Extract From Adam's Diary · Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven · Extracts From Adam's Diary · The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut · Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences · Following the Equator a Journey around the World · The Gilded Age · Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again · A Horse's Tale · How to Tell a Story and Other Essays · The Innocents Abroad · Is Shakespeare Dead? From my Autobiography · Life on the Mississippi BIOGRAPHIC ESSAYS
Mark Twain Essays Mark Twain - Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, is perhaps the most distinguished author of American Literature. Next to William Shakespeare, Clemens is arguably the most prominent writer the world has ever seen. In 1818, Jane Lampton found interest in a serious young lawyer named John Clemens. With the Lampton family in heavy debt and Jane only 15 years of age, she soon arried John. The family moved to Gainesboro, Tennessee where Jane gave birth to Orion Clemens. In the summer of 1827 the Clemenses relocated to Virginia where John purchased thousands of acres of land and opened a legal advice store.
From the Introduction:It should always be with some misgivings that an editor presents to the public materials which an author has discarded. By returning the materials to his files, the author has voted against publication. By resurrecting them, the editor risks exposing the author to the adverse criticism which he wished to avoid. But, at the same time, the resurrection serves a valuable purpose by making available indispensable evidence to be used by those seeking to understand the creative process. It is because they serve such a purpose that the texts published in this volume have been salvaged from Mark Twain's files. Indeed, they are doubly valuable because they aid in dispelling a myth about his own creative process which Twain himself did much to establish. In several instances Twain gave the impression that for him plotting a novel was a rather simple affair. . . . But in actuality, as the texts published in this volume illustrate, he experienced much more trouble than this statement would suggest in delimiting his fictional world, establishing its nature, and maintaining control over the characters placed therin.
This Library of America collection presents Twain's best-known works, including Adventures of Hucklebery Finn, together in one volume for the first time. Tom Sawyer “is simply a hymn,” said its author, “put into prose form to give it a worldly air,” a book where nostalgia is so strong that it dissolves the tensions and perplexities that assert themselves in the later works. Twain began Huckleberry Finn the same year Tom Sawyer was published, but he was unable to complete it for several more. It was during this period of uncertainty that Twain made a pilgrimage to the scenes of his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri, a trip that led eventually to Life on the Mississippi. The river in Twain’s descriptions is a bewitching mixture of beauty and power, seductive calms and treacherous shoals, pleasure and terror, an image of the societies it touches and transports. Each of these works is filled with comic and melodramatic adventure, with horseplay and poetic evocations of scenery, and with characters who have become central to American mythology—not only Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, but also Roxy, the mulatto slave in Puddn’head Wilson, one of the most telling portraits of a woman in American fiction. With each book there is evidence of a growing bafflement and despair, until with Puddn’head Wilson, high jinks and games, far from disguising the terrible cost of slavery, become instead its macabre evidence. Through each of four works, too, runs the Mississippi, the river that T. S. Eliot, echoing Twain, was to call the “strong brown god.” For Twain, the river represented the complex and often contradictory possibilities in his own and his nation’s life. The Mississippi marks the place where civilization, moving west with its comforts and proprieties, discovers and contends with the rough realities, violence, chicaneries, and promise of freedom on the frontier. It is the place, too, where the currents Mark Twain learned to navigate as a pilot—an experience recounted in Life on the Mississippi—move inexorably into the Deep South, so that the innocence of joyful play and boyhood along its shores eventually confronts the grim reality of slavery. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
This Library of America volume contains the novels that, when published, transformed an obscure Western journalist into a national celebrity. The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It (sometimes called The Innocents at Home) were immensely successful when first published and they remain today the most popular travel books ever written. The Innocents Abroad (1869), based largely on letters written for New York and San Francisco papers, narrates the progress of the first American organized tour of Europe—to Naples, Smyrna, Constantinople, and Palestine. In his account Mark Twain assumes two alternate roles: at times the no-nonsense American who refuses to automatically venerate the famous sights of the Old World (preferring Lake Tahoe to Lake Como), or at times the put-upon simpleton, a gullible victim of flatterers and “frauds,” and an awestruck admirer of Russian royalty. The result is a hilarious blend of vaudevillian comedy, actual travel guide, and stinging satire, directed at both the complacency of his fellow American travelers and their reverence for European relics. Out of the book emerges the first full-dress portrait of Mark Twain himself, the breezy, shrewd, and comical manipulator of English idioms and America’s mythologies about itself and its relation to the past. Roughing It (1872) is the lighthearted account of Mark Twain’s actual and imagined adventures when he escaped the Civil War and joined his brother, the recently appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory. His accounts of stagecoach travel, Native Americans, frontier society, the Mormons, the Chinese, and the codes, dress, food, and customs of the West are interspersed with his own experiences as a prospector, miner, journalist, boon companion, and lecturer as he traveled through Nevada, Utah, California, and even to the Hawaiian Islands. Mark Twain’s passage from tenderfoot to old-timer is accomplished through a long series of increasingly comical episodes. The plot is relaxed enough to accommodate some immensely funny and random character sketches, animal fables, tall tales, and dramatic monologues. The result is an enduring picture of the old Western frontier in all its original vigor and variety. In these two works, never before brought together so compactly, Mark Twain achieves his mastery of the vernacular style. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand," Mark Twain once wrote. In this sixth volume in The Library of America's authoritative collection of his writings-the final volume of his fiction-America's greatest humorist emerges in a surprising range of roles: as the savvy satirist of The Gilded Age, the brilliant plotter of its inventive sequel, The American Claimant, and, in two Tom Sawyer novels, as the acknowledged master revisiting his best-loved characters. Also in this volume is the authoritative version of Twain's haunting last novel, No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, left unpublished when he died. The Gilded Age (1873), a collaboration with Hartford neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, sends up an age when vast fortunes piled up amid thriving corruption and a city Twain knew well, Washington, D.C., full of would-be power brokers and humbug. The novel also gives us one of Twain's most enduring characters, Colonel Sellers, who returns in The American Claimant (1892), an encore performance that moves beyond the worldly satire of its predecessor into realms of sheer inventive mayhem. Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) and Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896) extend the adventures of Huck and Tom. No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (1908), an astonishing psychic adventure set in the gothic gloom of a medieval Austrian village, offers a powerful and uncanny exploration of the powers of the human mind. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
All of these selections in this volume were comosed between 1896 and 1905. Mark Twain wrote them after the disasters of the early and middle nineties that had included the decline into bankruptcy of his publishing business, the failure of the typsetting machine in which he invested heavily, and the death of his daughter Susy. Their principal fable is that of a man who has been long favored by luck while pursuing a dream of success that has seemed about to turn into reality. Sudden reverses occur and he experiences a nightmarish time of failure. He clutches at what may be a saving thought: perhaps he is indeed living in a nightmare from which he will awaken to his former felicity. But there is also the possibility that what seems a dream of disaster may be the actuality of his life. The question is the one asked by the titles that he gave to two of his manuscripts: "Which Was the Dream?" and "Which Was It?" He posed a similar question in 1893: "I dreamed I was born, and grew up, and was a pilot on the Mississippi, and a miner and journalist...and had a wife and children...and this dream goes on and on and on, and sometimes seems so real that I almost believe it is real. I wonder if it is?" Behind this naïve query was his strong interest in conscious and unconscious levels of mental experience, which were then being explored by the new psychology.
Mark Twain explores the darker side of life in these lesser-known later writings dealing with personal tragedies, nightmarish world events, and a doubtful cosmic order. He views his own situation as that of a ship trapped in a fearsome Bermuda Triangle-like region, the Devil's Race-Track. He sees history as a treadmill of endlessly and monotonously repeated events. And he conceives of a universal food chain, a vast round of devourers who in their turn become victims, humankind and God included. The tone of these writings is lightened considerably by Mark Twain's sagely ironic humor and his warmth, which together balance his tough-mindedness. And even when he shows the human race caught in some vicious circle, he may be seen courageously seeking a way out and at times believing he has found it.
Irreverent, charming, eminently quotable, this handbook—an eccentric etiquette guide for the human race—contains sixty-nine aphorisms, anecdotes, whimsical suggestions, maxims, and cautionary tales from Mark Twain's private and published writings. It dispenses advice and reflections on family life and public manners; opinions on topics such as dress, health, food, and childrearing and safety; and more specialized tips, such as those for dealing with annoying salesmen and burglars. Culled from Twain's personal letters, autobiographical writings, speeches, novels, and sketches, these pieces are delightfully fresh, witty, startlingly relevant, and bursting with Twain's characteristic ebullience for life. They also remind us exactly how Mark Twain came to be the most distinctive and well-known American literary voice in the world. These texts, some of them new or out of print for decades, have been selected and meticulously prepared by the editors at the Mark Twain Project.
Representative works are interpreted in light of the two great political movements of the nineteenth century: the abolition of slavery and the women's rights movement. By reexamining Emerson, Poe, Melville, Douglass, Walt Whitman, Chopin, and Faulkner and others, Rowe assesses the degree to which major writers' attitudes toward race, class, and gender contribute to specific political reforms in nineteenth and twentieth-century American culture.
I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I had a jolly time. I would not have fooled away any of it writing letters under any consideration whatever." --Mark Twain So Samuel Langhorne Clemens made his excuse for late copy to the Sacramento Union, the newspaper that was underwriting his 1866 trip. If the young reporter's excuse makes perfect sense to you, join the thousands of Island lovers who have delighted in Twain's efforts when he finally did put pen to paper.
This volume provides authoritative texts of Twain’s unpublished writings, both fictional and factual, about the people and places of his home town, Hannibal, Missouri. A significant part of only one of them, "Jane Lampton Clemens," has been published; it was inserted unjustifiably in Twain's Authobiography . Written soon after the death of Clemens's mother on 27October 1890, it arranges and assesses a son's recollections of a vibrant personality important in shaping his life. At the start the author turns to the time when he, a six-year-old, knelt with his mother by the bed on which his dead brother lay—a harassing experience that understandably seared the boy's memory. The sketch moves on to a host of details about antebellum Hannibal, its society and its attitudes toward slavery, and to vivid memories about the child, his mother, and his father in the 1840's and 1850's. The movement from a single remembered episode to a series of loosely associated recollections was a typical performance in Clemens's "autobiography" and his fiction.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is about a young boy, Huck, in search of freedom and adventure. He meets a run away slave named Jim and the two undertake a series of adventures based on the Picaresque novel by Mark Twain. As the story progresses the duo exploit an array of episodic enterprises, while Huckleberry slowly changes his views of bigotry. Along the way, Huck and Jim meet the King and Duke, who ultimately send the protagonists towards a different route on their journey. As Huck begins to have a change of heart, he gradually begins to distinguish between right and wrong, and conclusively, Huck is faced with the moral dilemma between the worlds prejudice, of which hes grown up with, and the lessons Jim has taught him throughout the story about the evils of racism. The complexity of his character is enhanced by his ability to relate so easily with nature and the river.
A verbatim reproduction of Mark Twain's little known seventh book, with original illustrations. This edition predates Twain's better known "Sketches New and Old.
The year 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death. In celebration of this important milestone and in honor of the cherished tradition of publishing Mark Twain’s works, UC Press published Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1, the first of a projected three-volume edition of the complete, uncensored autobiography. The book became an immediate bestseller and was hailed as the capstone of the life’s work of America’s favorite author. This Reader’s Edition, a portable paperback in larger type, republishes the text of the hardcover Autobiography in a form that is convenient for the general reader, without the editorial explanatory notes. It includes a brief introduction describing the evolution of Mark Twain’s ideas about writing his autobiography, as well as a chronology of his life, brief family biographies, and an excerpt from the forthcoming Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2—a controversial but characteristically humorous attack on Christian doctrine.
For years, many of Twain’s philosophical, religious, and historical fantasies concerning the nature and condition of humanity remained unpublished. Thirty-six of these writings make their first appearance here.
Autobiography of Mark Twain (1907) is a collection of autobiographical writings by American humorist Mark Twain. Dictated toward the end of his life, the Autobiography of Mark Twain is a series of brief reflections on 74 years of fame, hard work, and adventure by an icon of American literature. Originally serialized in the North American Review, the United States’ oldest literary magazine, the Autobiography of Mark Twain has gone through countless editions in the century after Twain’s death, and is considered a masterpiece of literary nonfiction. “I intend that this autobiography shall become a model for all future autobiographies when it is published [...] because of its form and method—a form and method whereby the past and the present are constantly brought face to face, resulting in contrasts which newly fire up the interest all along, like contact of flint with steel.” Focusing on the small events, unremarkable encounters, and marginalia which make a life both common and particular, Mark Twain envisions a model of autobiography capable of dispelling the myth of the writer as a man of fortune and mysterious talent. Capturing episodes from his youth and the early stages of his writing career, reflecting on the importance of his wife Olivia and daughter Susy, and describing the influence of labor on his philosophy of life, Twain invites his reader to recognize him not just as Samuel Clemens, his birth name, but as a man who lived and worked and triumphed and suffered alongside others, as a man whose success was a testament to the power of community. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Mark Twain’s Autobiography of Mark Twain is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.
Mark Twain's letters for 1874 and 1875 encompass one of his most productive and rewarding periods as author, husband and father, and man of property. He completed the writing of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published the major collection Sketches, New and Old, became a leading contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, and turned The Gilded Age, the novel he had previously coauthored with Charles Dudley Warner, into one of the most popular comedies of the nineteenth-century American stage. His personal life also was gratifying, unmarred by the family tragedies that had darkened the earlier years of the decade. He and his wife welcomed a second healthy daughter and moved into the showplace home in Hartford, Connecticut, that they occupied happily for the next sixteen years. All of these accomplishments and events are vividly captured, in Mark Twain's inimitable language and with his unmatched humor, in letters to family and friends, among them some of the leading writers of the day. The comprehensive editorial annotation supplies the historical and social context that helps make these letters as fresh and immediate to a modern audience as they were to their original readers. This volume is the sixth in the only complete edition of Mark Twain's letters ever attempted. The 348 letters it contains, many of them never before published, have been meticulously transcribed, either from the original manuscripts (when extant) or from the most reliable sources now available. They have been thoroughly annotated and indexed and are supplemented by genealogical charts, contemporary notices of Mark Twain and his works, and photographs of him, his family, and his friends.
Mark Twain’s complete, uncensored Autobiography was an instant bestseller when the first volume was published in 2010, on the centennial of the author’s death, as he requested. Published to rave reviews, the Autobiography was hailed as the capstone of Twain’s career. It captures his authentic and unsuppressed voice, speaking clearly from the grave and brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions. The eagerly-awaited Volume 2 delves deeper into Mark Twain’s life, uncovering the many roles he played in his private and public worlds. Filled with his characteristic blend of humor and ire, the narrative ranges effortlessly across the contemporary scene. He shares his views on writing and speaking, his preoccupation with money, and his contempt for the politics and politicians of his day. Affectionate and scathing by turns, his intractable curiosity and candor are everywhere on view. Editors: Benjamin Griffin and Harriet E. Smith Associate Editors: Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz and Leslie Diane Myrick
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