MARK TWAIN

(1835-1910)

MARK TWAIN (1835-1910)

• Real name:

Samuel Langhorne Clemens

• Born in Florida, Mo., on Nov. 30, 1835
• Grew up in Hannibal, Mo., on the Mississippi.

Mark Twain’s boyhood home in
Hannibal

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -- Mark Twain

• Began his career as a

journeyman printer. Later he

joined his brother Orion in

abortive efforts to edit

newspapers, first in

Hannibal, then in Muscatine

and Keokuk, Iowa. His first

attempts at humor appeared

mainly in these papers.

• He became an expert

printer, and between 1853

and 1857 visited St. Louis,

New York, Philadelphia,

Washington, and Cleveland,

supporting himself by his

trade.

"It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open
it and remove all doubt." – Mark Twain

• In 1857 he set out for New Orleans. En route, talks

with the pilot, Horace Bixby, revived the boyhood

dream of "learning the river," and Bixby agreed to

take Clemens on as a "cub." He became a licensed

pilot in 1859, and until Secession closed the river he

appears to have been regularly employed.

• In 1861 Clemens joined his brother in Nevada. He

had enough saved from his pilot's earnings to

support himself through almost a year of fruitless

prospecting.

• During that year he contributed some humorous skits

to the Territorial Enterprise of Virginia City, and in

August 1862, was invited to join the staff. Seeking a

good pen name, he chose the Mississippi leadsman's

call, "mark twain" (i.e., two fathoms--safe water).

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three
unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,
and the prudence never to practice either of them." – Mark Twain

• In 1864, a quarrel with a rival

journalist, whom he challenged

to a duel, forced Clemens to flee

to San Francisco. For the next

two years he worked for various

California papers, except for an

interlude (December 1864-

February 1865) on Jackass Hill in

the Mother Lode country of

California. There he lived with

Jim Gillis, a prospector and a

masterly teller of tall stories,

who appears in Mark Twain's

books as Jim Baker and Dick

Stoker.

"Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the
undertaker will be sorry." – Mark Twain

• Early in 1866 the Sacramento Union commissioned

Clemens to do a series of letters about Hawaii. Their
popularity encouraged him to try a humorous lecture on
his experiences. First delivered in San Francisco on
October 2, with huge success, the lecture was repeated
on a three-month tour. In December Clemens agreed to
supply a weekly newsletter to the Alta California of San
Francisco and set out for New York via Nicaragua.

"The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the
wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right." –
Mark Twain

• In New York he saw the announcement of a

Mediterranean cruise in the steamer Quaker City

and persuaded the Alta to send him with it.

Besides supplying the material for The Innocents

Abroad, the tour brought him the friendship of

young Charles Langdon of Elmira, N.Y., whose

sister Olivia he married, after a checkered

courtship, on Feb. 2, 1870. With help from Jervis

Langdon, his prosperous father-in-law, Clemens

bought an interest in the Buffalo Express,

intending to make journalism his career.

• The venture proved unhappy. Jervis Langdon

died of cancer; Olivia, worn out with helping to

nurse her father, gave premature birth to a son,

Langdon, who died in infancy.

"Always do right. That will gratify some of the people, and astonish the

rest." – Mark Twain

• In 1871 Clemens moved to Hartford, Conn., where

Elisha Bliss of the American Publishing Co.--the

subscription firm which handled The Innocents--had

his office.

• There the Nook Farm group, which

included Harriet Beecher Stowe,

Charles Dudley Warner, and

Theodore Hooker, furnished

congenial company. In the big

house on Farmington Avenue,

Clemens spent his happiest, most

productive years, and Olivia bore

three daughters: Susy (1872-1896),

Clara (1874-1962), and Jean (1880-

1909).

"The lack of money is the root of all evil." – Mark Twain

• In 1884 Clemens established his own subscription

firm under the nominal management of his

nephew by marriage, Charles L. Webster. Their first

publications were Huckleberry Finn (1884) and U.

S. Grant's Memoirs (1885), the latter setting an all-

time high in subscription sales. This success could

not be repeated; the Webster Company failed in

the depression of 1893-1894.

• To economize, the Clemenses in 1891 went to

Europe and for the next decade had no permanent

home. For a couple of years Clemens himself

returned at intervals to New York, in vain hopes of

salvaging something from the wreckage. Henry H.

Rogers of the Standard Oil Company befriended

him, and in 1894 handled the negotiations with the

Webster Company's creditors.

"There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate:
when he can't afford it, and when he can." – Mark Twain

• Clemens announced that he

would pay all debts in full, and in

July 1895 began a lecture tour

around the world. The tour was a

triumph ending in heartbreak.

Olivia and Clara had accompanied

Clemens; Susy and Jean had

remained with their mother's

family. On Aug. 18, 1896, Susy

died of meningitis before her

mother could reach her.

• Within four years all debts were

paid, and Rogers' management

had stabilized the family's

finances. Clemens came home in

1900, to public honors and private

griefs.

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over
the man who can't read them." -- Mark Twain

• Olivia died in 1904, after long suffering; Jean

had a fatal epileptic seizure on Christmas Eve,

1909, at Stormfield, Clemens' new home at

Redding, Conn. He followed her in death less

than four months later on Apr. 21, 1910.

• He was proud of his public honors, which had

culminated in a Litt.D. from Oxford in 1907,

but his heart knew its own bitterness. His last,

most scathing invective against "the damned

human race," Letters From the Earth, was held

from publication by his daughter Clara until

1962.

"Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man
or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been
married a quarter of a century." – Mark Twain

WORKS

• The Innocents Abroad

(1869) -

made him nationally famous,

with 40,000 sales in its first year.

It also established a pattern

visible in much of his subsequent

work -- a journey in space.

• Roughing It

(1872)

• The Gilded Age

(1874) - written

in collaboration with Charles

Dudley Warner. Meant as

contemporary social satire, the

story gave its name to the Grant

administration.

• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

(1876)

"A sin takes on a new and real terror when there seems a chance
that it is going to be found out." – Mark Twain

Illustrations (by True W. Williams) from the first edition of

The

Adventures of Tom Sawyer

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is

laughter." – Mark Twain

WORKS – cont.

• Life on the Mississippi

(1883)

• Huckleberry Finn

(1884)

• The Prince and the Pauper

(1881),

Clemens' first attempt at historical

romance

• A Connecticut Yankee at King

Arthur's Court

(1889)

• Personal Recollections of Joan of

Arc

(1896)

• Pudd'nhead Wilson

(1894)

• Tom Sawyer Abroad

(1894)

• Tom Sawyer, Detective

(1896)

• The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg

(1898)

• What Is Man

? (1906)

• The Mysterious Stranger

(1916)

"I have been an author for 20 years and an ass for 55." – Mark Twain

Other writers on Twain

".the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs."

-- William Faulkner

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called

"Huckleberry Finn." all American writing comes from that. There was nothing

before. There has been nothing as good since."

-- Ernest Hemingway

"The mark of how good '"Huckleberry Finn" has to be is that one can

compare it to a number of our best modern American novels and it stands

up page for page, awkward here, sensational there - absolutely the equal of

one of those rare incredible first novels that come along once or twice in a

decade."

-- Norman Mailer

"I believe that Mark Twain had a clearer vision of life, that he came nearer to

its elementals and was less deceived by its false appearances, than any

other American who has ever presumed to manufacture generalizations, not

excepting Emerson. I believe that he was the true father of our national

literature, the first genuinely American artist of the royal blood."

-- H.L. Mencken

"An author values a compliment even when it comes from a
source of doubtful competency." -- Mark Twain