Mark+twain+biography

He said that after an initial spell of enthusiasm for imperialism he became very suspicious of imperialist motives, e. Twain became vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League in until his death in Twain was also a staunch supporter of abolition and black emancipation. The early works of Twain were generally light-hearted and humorous.

However, as his writing and life developed, his books and articles increasingly became more serious and focused on the pressing social issues facing America. With the same deft touch and comic turn, Twain became a satirist on the cruelties and injustice of mankind and gave vent to his deeply held beliefs. Hemingway later wrote that:.

After working briefly for the Buffalo Express newspaper, Twain took his family and three daughters to live in Hartford, Connecticut. The family lived there for 17 years, and this gave Mark Twain a firm base to devote himself to writing. It was here that he wrote his best-known books — The Adventures of Tom Sawyerand Adventures of Huckleberry Finn As his fame and profile grew, Twain gained a substantial income through his writing.

However, unfortunately, he lost a small fortune through a misplaced investment in the Paige typesetting machines. Combined with money lost through his own publishing house, Twain faced bankruptcy but was saved with the help of financier Henry Rogers. Twain then worked hard — undertaking a worldwide lecture tour to pay off his debts in full. Mark Twain received very less formal education.

He had to quit schooling when his father died when he was just twelve. To meet the daily expenses, he started working as a typesetter in and contributed various humorous sketches and articles to a journal. At eighteen, he worked as a printer in New York. Despite hardships, his love for literature and art never faded. Besides working, he educated himself at private libraries and gathered wider information better than a formal school going young man of his age.

With minimal formal schooling, Mark Twain succeeds in creating literary marvels that the masters envy to this day. Mark Twain became one of the most famous writers in America at the age of thirty-four, yet he was insecure about his social and financial status. I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. Fiction mark+twain+biography obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge. By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's I mean. An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before.

An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before. Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more. Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The Million Pound Bank Note. The Tragedy of Pudd'Nhead Wilson. Short Stories About Barbers. About Magnanimous-Incident Literature. About Play-Acting. About Smells. A Burlesque Biography.

A Cure for the Blues. A Curious Experience. A Curious Pleasure Excursion. A Defence of General Funston. A Dog's Tale. Advice To Little Girls. A Entertaining Article. A Fashion Item. A Fine Old Man. After-Dinner Speech. A Ghost Story. A Helpless Situation. A Humane Word from Satan. A Letter from Santa Claus. A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury.

A Medieval Romance. Amended Obituaries. Among the Fenians. Among the Spirits. A Monument to Adam. A Mysterious Visit. In his mark+twain+biography years, Twain lived at 14 West 10th Street in Manhattan. Olivia's death in and Jean's on December 24,deepened Twain's gloom. In AprilTwain heard that his friend Ina Coolbrith had lost nearly all that she owned in the San Francisco earthquakeand he volunteered a few autographed portrait photographs to be sold for her benefit.

Twain was resistant initially, but he eventually admitted that four of the resulting images were the finest ones ever taken of him. InTwain formed the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club, for girls whom he viewed as surrogate granddaughters. Its dozen or so members ranged in age from 10 to Twain exchanged letters with his "Angel Fish" girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games.

Twain wrote in that the club was his "life's chief delight". Twain was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters D. Oxford University awarded him a Doctorate of Law in Twain was born two weeks after Halley's Comet 's closest approach in ; he said in [ 74 ]. I came in with Halley's Comet in It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.

It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together". Twain's prediction was eerily accurate; he died of a heart attack on April 21,in Stormfieldone month before the comet passed Earth that year.

Mark Twain gave pleasure — real intellectual enjoyment — to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature. The Langdon family plot is marked by a foot monument two fathoms, or "mark twain" placed there by Twain's surviving daughter Clara.

He expressed a preference for cremation for example, in Life on the Mississippibut he acknowledged that his surviving family would have the last word. Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but he became a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies, and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, Twain combined rich humor, sturdy narrative, and social criticism in Huckleberry Finn.

He was a master of rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on Mark+twain+biography themes and language. Many of Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools, not least for its frequent use of the word " nigger ", [ ] a slur commonly used for Black people in the nineteenth century.

A complete bibliography of Twain's works is nearly impossible to compile because of the vast number of pieces he wrote often in obscure newspapers and his use of several different pen names. Additionally, a large portion of Twain's speeches and lectures have been lost or were not recorded; thus, the compilation of his works is an ongoing process.

Researchers have rediscovered published material as recently as and Twain was writing for the Virginia City newspaper the Territorial Enterprise in when he met lawyer Tom Fitcheditor of the competing newspaper Virginia Daily Union and known as the "silver-tongued orator of the Pacific". Clemens, your lecture was magnificent. It was eloquent, moving, sincere.

Never in my entire life have I listened to such a magnificent piece of descriptive narration. But you committed one unpardonable sin — the unpardonable sin. It is a sin you must never commit again. You closed a most eloquent description, by which you had keyed your audience up to a pitch of the intensest interest, with a piece of atrocious anti-climax which nullified all the really fine effect you had produced.

It was in these days that Twain became a writer of the Sagebrush School ; he was known later as its most famous member. After a burst of popularity, the Sacramento Union commissioned him to write letters about his travel experiences. The first journey that Twain took for this job was to ride the steamer Ajax on its maiden voyage to the Sandwich Islands Hawaii.

All the while, he was writing letters to the newspaper that were meant for publishing, chronicling his experiences with humor. These letters proved to be the genesis to Twain's work with the San Francisco Alta California newspaper, which designated him a traveling correspondent for a trip from San Francisco to New York City via the Panama isthmus.

Inhe published his second piece of travel literature, Roughing Itas an account of his journey from Missouri to Nevada, his subsequent life in the American Westand his visit to Hawaii. The book lampoons American and Western society in the same way that Innocents critiqued the various countries of Europe and the Middle East. The book, written with Twain's neighbor Charles Dudley Warneris also his only collaboration.

Twain's next work drew on his experiences on the Mississippi River. Old Times on the Mississippi was a series of sketches published in the Atlantic Monthly in featuring his disillusionment with Romanticism. Twain's next major publication was The Adventures of Tom Sawyerwhich draws on his youth in Hannibal. The Prince and the Pauper was not as well received, despite a storyline that is common in film and literature today.

The book tells the story of two boys born on the same day who are physically identical, acting as a social commentary as the prince and pauper switch places. Twain had started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which he consistently had problems completing [ ] and had completed his travel book A Tramp Abroadwhich describes his travels through central and southern Europe.

Twain's next major published work was the Adventures of Huckleberry Finnwhich confirmed him as a noteworthy American writer. Some have called it the first Great American Novel, and the book has become required reading in many schools throughout the United States. Huckleberry Finn was an offshoot from Tom Sawyer and had a more serious tone than its predecessor.

Four hundred manuscript pages were written in mid, right after the publication of Tom Sawyer. The last fifth of Huckleberry Finn is subject to much controversy. Some say that Twain experienced a "failure of nerve," as critic Leo Marx puts it. Ernest Hemingway once said of Huckleberry Finn :. If you read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys.

That is the real end. The rest is just cheating. Near the completion of Huckleberry FinnTwain wrote Life on the Mississippiwhich is said to have heavily influenced the novel. In it, he also explains that "Mark Twain" was the call made when the boat was in safe water, indicating a depth of two or twain fathoms 12 feet or 3. Twain produced President Ulysses S.

Grant 's Memoirs through his fledgling publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Companywhich he co-owned with Charles L. Websterhis nephew by marriage. A Connecticut Yankee shows the absurdities of political and social norms by setting them in the court of King Arthur. The book was started in Decemberthen shelved a few months later until the summer ofand eventually finished in the spring of Twain's next large-scale work was Pudd'nhead Wilsonwhich he wrote rapidly, as he was desperately trying to stave off bankruptcy.

From November 12 to December 14,Twain wrote 60, words for the novel. This novel also contains the tale of two boys born on the same day who switch positions in life, like The Prince and the Pauper. It was first published serially in Century Magazineand when it was finally published in book form, Pudd'nhead Wilson appeared as the main title; however, the "subtitles" make the entire title read The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy of The Extraordinary Twins.

Twain's next venture was a work of straight fiction that he called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and dedicated to his wife. Twain said a year before his death that this was the work that he was most proud of, despite the criticism that he received for it, writing: " I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well.

And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none. Twain specifically insisted it to be an anonymous publication so that readers would take it as a serious historical account. To pay the bills and keep his business projects afloat, Twain had begun to write articles and commentary furiously, with diminishing returns, but it was not enough.

He filed for bankruptcy in During this time of dire financial straits, Twain published several literary reviews in newspapers to help make ends meet. Twain became an extremely outspoken critic of other authors and other critics; he suggested that, before praising Cooper's work, Thomas LounsburyBrander Matthewsand Wilkie Collins "ought to have read some of it".

George EliotJane Austenand Robert Louis Stevenson also fell under Twain's attack during this time period, beginning around and continuing until his death. Twain places emphasis on concision, utility of word choice, and realism; he complains, for example, that Cooper's Deerslayer purports to be realistic but has several shortcomings. Ironically, several of Twain's own works were later criticized for lack of continuity Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and organization Pudd'nhead Wilson.

Twain's wife died in while the couple were staying at the Villa di Quarto in Florence.

Mark+twain+biography: Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30,

After some time had passed, he published some works that his wife, his de facto editor and censor throughout her married life, had looked down upon. The Mysterious Stranger is perhaps the best known, depicting various visits of Satan to earth. This particular work was not published in Twain's lifetime. His manuscripts included three versions, written between and the so-called Hannibal, Eseldorf, and Print Shop versions.

The resulting confusion led to extensive publication of a jumbled version, and only recently [ when? Twain's last work was his autobiographywhich he dictated and thought would be most entertaining if he went off on whims and tangents in mark+twain+biography order. Some archivists and compilers have rearranged the biography into a more conventional form, thereby eliminating some of Twain's humor and the flow of the book.

The first volume of the autobiography, over pages, was published by the University of California in Novemberyears after his death, as Twain wished. Twain's works have been subjected to censorship efforts. According to Stuart"Leading these banning campaigns, generally, were religious organizations or individuals in positions of influence — not so much working librarians, who had been instilled with that American "library mark+twain+biography which honored intellectual freedom within bounds of course ".

For two decades, Twain lived in a house in Hartford, Connecticut —and the American Publishing Company in that city published the first edition of several of his books. Webster and Company. Twain's views became more radical as he grew older. In a letter to friend and fellow writer William Dean Howells inTwain acknowledged that his views had changed and developed over his lifetime, referring to one of his favorite works:.

When I finished Carlyle 's French Revolution inI was a Girondin ; every time I have read it since, I have read it differently — being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and environment And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat. Twain was a staunch supporter of technological progress and commerce. He was against welfare measures, because Twain believed that society in the " business age " is governed by "exact and constant" laws that should not be "interfered with for the accommodation of any individual or political or religious faction".

By present standards Mark Twain was more conservative than liberal. He believed strongly in laissez faire, thought personal political rights secondary to property rights, admired self-made plutocrats, and advocated a leadership to be composed of men of wealth and brains. Among his attitudes now more readily recognized as mark+twain+biography were a faith in progress through technology and a hostility towards monarchy, inherited aristocracy, the Roman Catholic church, and, in his later years, imperialism.

Twain wrote glowingly about unions in the river boating industry in Life on the Mississippiwhich was read in union halls decades later. Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.

Twain further wrote "Why is it right that there is not a fairer division of the spoil all around?

Mark+twain+biography: The Early Years. Samuel

Because laws and constitutions have ordered otherwise. Then it follows that laws and constitutions should change around and say there shall be a more nearly equal division. BeforeTwain was largely in favor of imperialism. In the late s and early s, he spoke out strongly in favor of American interests in the Hawaiian Islands. In the New York HeraldOctober 16,Twain describes his transformation and political awakening, in the context of the Philippine—American Warto anti-imperialism :.

I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific Why mark+twain+biography spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? I said to myself, Here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American Constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world.

It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves. But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris which ended the Spanish—American Warand I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way.

And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land. During the Boxer RebellionTwain said that "the Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other people. I wish him success. Fromsoon after his return from Europe, until his death in mark+twain+biography, Twain was vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League[ ] which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States and had "tens of thousands of members".

The Incident in the Philippinesposthumously published inwas in response to the Moro Crater Massacrein which Moros were killed.

Mark+twain+biography: Mark Twain was a

Twain wrote: "In what way was it a battle? It has no resemblance to a battle We cleaned up our four days' work and made it complete by butchering these helpless people. Twain was critical of imperialism in other countries as well. In Following the EquatorTwain expresses "hatred and condemnation of imperialism of all stripes". Reports of outrageous exploitation and grotesque abuses led to widespread international outcry in the early s, arguably the first large-scale human rights movement.

In the soliloquy, the King argues that bringing Christianity to the colony outweighs "a little starvation". The abuses against Congolese forced laborers continued until the movement forced the Belgian government to take direct control of the colony. During the Philippine—American WarTwain wrote a short pacifist story titled The War Prayerwhich makes the point that humanism and Christianity's preaching of love are incompatible with the conduct of war.

It was submitted to Harper's Bazaar for publication, but on March 22,the magazine rejected the story as "not quite suited to a woman's magazine ". Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Daniel Carter Beardto whom he had read the story, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.

Twain acknowledged that he had originally sympathized with the more moderate Girondins of the French Revolution and then shifted his sympathies to the more radical Sansculottesindeed identifying himself as "a Marat " and writing that the Reign of Terror paled in comparison to the older terrors that preceded it. I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle.

I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute. Twain was an adamant supporter of the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves, even going so far as to say, " Lincoln 's Proclamation Twain was also a supporter of women's suffrageas evidenced by his " Votes for Women " speech, given in Helen Keller benefited from Twain's support as she pursued her college education and publishing despite her disabilities and financial limitations.

The two were friends for roughly 16 years. Through Twain's efforts, the Connecticut legislature voted a pension for Prudence Crandallsince Connecticut's official heroine, for her efforts towards the education of young African-American women in Connecticut. Twain also offered to purchase for her use her former house in Canterbury, home of the Canterbury Female Boarding Schoolbut she declined.

At 62, Twain wrote in his travelogue Following the Equator that in colonized lands all over the world, "savages" have always been wronged by " whites " in the most merciless ways, such as "robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man's whiskey"; his conclusion is that "there are many humorous things in this world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages".

Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile. Twain's earlier writings on American Indians reflected his view of essentialized racial difference. Twain wrote in "The Noble Red Man" in His heart is a cesspool of falsehood, of treachery, and of low and devilish instincts. With him, gratitude is an unknown emotion; and when one does him a kindness, it is safest to keep the face toward him, lest the reward be an arrow in the back.

To accept of a favor from him is to assume a debt which you mark+twain+biography never repay to his satisfaction, though you bankrupt yourself trying. The scum of the earth! In the same tract, Twain advocates genocide, describing the "Noble Aborigine" as : "nothing but a poor filthy, naked scurvy vagabond, whom to exterminate were a charity to the Creator's worthier insects and reptiles which he oppresses" [ ] This piece sought to undermine the sympathy felt on the "Atlantic seabord" for Native Americans.

There was seldom a mark+twain+biography one among them. Twain was a Republican for most of his life. Mark+twain+biography, inTwain publicly broke with his party and joined the Mugwumps to support the Democratic nominee, Grover Clevelandover the Republican nominee, James G. Blainewhom he considered a corrupt politician. In the early 20th century, Twain began decrying both Democrats and Republicans as "insane" and proposed, in his book Christian Sciencethat while each party recognized the other's insanity, only the Mugwumps that is, those who eschewed party loyalties in favor of voting for "the best man" could perceive the overall madness linking the two.

Twain was a Presbyterian. For example, Twain wrote, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so", and "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be — a Christian". Twain generally avoided publishing his most controversial [ ] opinions on religion in his lifetime, and they are known from essays and stories that were published later.

In the essay Three Statements of the Eighties in the s, Twain stated that he believed in an almighty God, but not in any messages, revelationsholy scriptures such as the Bible, Providenceor retribution in the afterlife. Twain did state that "the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of God are manifested in His works", but also that " the universe is governed by strict and immutable laws ", which determine "small matters", such as who dies in a pestilence.

At other times, he conjectured sardonically that perhaps God had created the world with all its tortures for some purpose of His own, but was otherwise indifferent to humanity, which was too petty and insignificant to deserve His attention anyway.