After working closely with Ulysses S. The prototype for the Paige typesetter also seemed to be working splendidly. Things did not go according to plan, however. His publishing company was floundering, and cash flow problems meant he was drawing on his royalties to provide capital for the business. Clemens was suffering from rheumatism in his right arm, but he continued to write for magazines out of necessity.
He closed his beloved house in Hartford, and the family moved to Europe, where they might live more cheaply and, perhaps, where his wife, who had always been frail, might improve her health. Debts continued to mount, and the financial panic of made it difficult to borrow money. Clemens assigned his property, including his copyrights, to Olivia, announced the failure of his publishing house, and declared personal bankruptcy.
In , approaching his 60th year, Samuel Clemens was forced to repair his fortunes and to remake his career. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. The persona of Mark Twain had become something of a curse for Samuel Clemens. Clemens published his next novel, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc serialized —96 , anonymously in hopes that the public might take it more seriously than a book bearing the Mark Twain name. However, in later years he would publish some works anonymously, and still others he declared could not be published until long after his death, on the largely erroneous assumption that his true views would scandalize the public.
He gave lectures in Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and points in-between, arriving in England a little more than a year afterward.
Clemens was in London when he was notified of the death of his daughter Susy, of spinal meningitis. A pall settled over the Clemens household; they would not celebrate birthdays or holidays for the next several years. As an antidote to his grief as much as anything else, Clemens threw himself into work.
He wrote a great deal he did not intend to publish during those years, but he did publish Following the Equator , a relatively serious account of his world lecture tour.
Palpable tokens of public approbation are the three honorary degrees conferred on Clemens in his last years—from Yale University in , from the University of Missouri in , and, the one he most coveted, from Oxford University in When he traveled to Missouri to receive his honorary Doctor of Laws, he visited old friends in Hannibal along the way.
He knew that it would be his last visit to his hometown. Clemens had acquired the esteem and moral authority he had yearned for only a few years before, and the writer made good use of his reinvigorated position. He began writing The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg , a devastating satire of venality in small-town America, and the first of three manuscript versions of The Mysterious Stranger.
None of the manuscripts was ever completed, and they were posthumously combined and published in He also started What Is Man? He began to dictate his autobiography, which he would continue to do until a few months before he died. The description may or may not be apt. At any rate, even though the worst of his financial worries were behind him, there was no particular reason for Clemens to be in a good mood.
The family, including Clemens himself, had suffered from one sort of ailment or another for a very long time. In his daughter Jean was diagnosed with epilepsy, and the search for a cure, or at least relief, had taken the family to different doctors throughout Europe. She was violently ill in , and for a time Clemens was allowed to see her for only five minutes a day. Removing to Italy seemed to improve her condition, but that was only temporary. She died on June 5, The story chronicles in tenderly comic ways the loving relationship between Adam and Eve.
He would have yet another occasion to publish his grief. His daughter Jean died on Dec. The Death of Jean was written beside her deathbed. It is true that Clemens was bitter and lonely during his last years.
In —07 he published selected chapters from his ongoing autobiography in the North American Review. Judging from the tone of the work, writing his autobiography often supplied Clemens with at least a wistful pleasure. These writings and others reveal an imaginative energy and humorous exuberance that do not fit the picture of a wholly bitter and cynical man.
He moved into his new house in Redding, Conn. It is an uneven but delightfully humorous story, one that critic and journalist H. Mencken ranked on a level with Huckleberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi. Little Bessie and Letters from the Earth both published posthumously were also written during this period, and, while they are sardonic, they are antically comic as well.
Clemens thought Letters from the Earth was so heretical that it could never be published. The letters did present unorthodox views—that God was something of a bungling scientist and human beings his failed experiment, that Christ, not Satan, devised hell, and that God was ultimately to blame for human suffering, injustice, and hypocrisy. Twain was speaking candidly in his last years but still with a vitality and ironic detachment that kept his work from being merely the fulminations of an old and angry man.
Clara Clemens married in October and left for Europe by early December. Jean died later that month. Clemens was too grief-stricken to attend the burial services, and he stopped working on his autobiography. Perhaps as an escape from painful memories, he traveled to Bermuda in January By early April he was having severe chest pains.
His biographer Albert Bigelow Paine joined him, and together they returned to Stormfield. Clemens died on April The last piece of writing he did, evidently, was the short humorous sketch Etiquette for the Afterlife: Advice to Paine first published in full in Heaven goes by favor.
If it went by merit, you would stay out and the dog would go in. Only Clara survived him. As a humorist and as a moralist, Twain worked best in short pieces. In A True Story, told in an African American dialect, Twain transformed the resources of the typically American humorous story into something serious and profoundly moving.
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg is relentless social satire; it is also the most formally controlled piece Twain ever wrote. The originality of the longer works is often to be found more in their conception than in their sustained execution.
Twain was not the first Anglo-American to treat the problems of race and racism in all their complexity, but, along with that of Herman Melville, his treatment remains of vital interest more than a hundred years later.
His ability to swiftly and convincingly create a variety of fictional characters rivals that of Charles Dickens. And his mastery of spoken language, of slang and argot and dialect, gave these figures a voice. Howells, who had known most of the important American literary figures of the 19th century and thought them to be more or less like one another, believed that Twain was unique.
Twain will always be remembered first and foremost as a humorist, but he was a great deal more—a public moralist, popular entertainer, political philosopher, travel writer, and novelist. Perhaps it is too much to claim, as some have, that Twain invented the American point of view in fiction, but that such a notion might be entertained indicates that his place in American literary culture is secure.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born two months prematurely on November 30, , in tiny Florida, Missouri, and remained sickly and frail until he was 7 years old.
Clemens was the sixth of seven children, only three of whom survived to The Roman politician and general Mark Antony 83—30 B. His romantic and political Impressionism was a radical art movement that began in the late s, centered primarily around Parisian painters.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published in , and soon thereafter he began writing a sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Writing this work, commented biographer Everett Emerson, freed Twain temporarily from the "inhibitions of the culture he had chosen to embrace.
Hemingway's comment refers specifically to the colloquial language of Twain's masterpiece, as for perhaps the first time in America, the vivid, raw, not-so-respectable voice of the common folk was used to create great literature.
Huck Finn required years to conceptualize and write, and Twain often put it aside. In the meantime, he pursued respectability with the publication of The Prince and the Pauper , a charming novel endorsed with enthusiasm by his genteel family and friends.
In he put out Life on the Mississippi , an interesting but safe travel book. When Huck Finn finally was published in , Livy gave it a chilly reception. After that, business and writing were of equal value to Twain as he set about his cardinal task of earning a lot of money. In , he triumphed as a book publisher by issuing the bestselling memoirs of former President Ulysses S. Grant , who had just died. He lavished many hours on this and other business ventures, and was certain that his efforts would be rewarded with enormous wealth, but he never achieved the success he expected.
His publishing house eventually went bankrupt. Twain's financial failings, reminiscent in some ways of his father's, had serious consequences for his state of mind. They contributed powerfully to a growing pessimism in him, a deep-down feeling that human existence is a cosmic joke perpetrated by a chuckling God.
Another cause of his angst, perhaps, was his unconscious anger at himself for not giving undivided attention to his deepest creative instincts, which centered on his Missouri boyhood. His next major work, in , was The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson , a somber novel that some observers described as "bitter. He also wrote short stories, essays and several other books, including a study of Joan of Arc. Some of these later works have enduring merit, and his unfinished work The Chronicle of Young Satan has fervent admirers today.
Twain's last 15 years were filled with public honors, including degrees from Oxford and Yale. Probably the most famous American of the late 19th century, he was much photographed and applauded wherever he went. Indeed, he was one of the most prominent celebrities in the world, traveling widely overseas, including a successful 'round-the-world lecture tour in , undertaken to pay off his debts. But while those years were gilded with awards, they also brought him much anguish.
Early in their marriage, he and Livy had lost their toddler son, Langdon, to diphtheria; in , his favorite daughter, Susy, died at the age of 24 of spinal meningitis. The loss broke his heart, and adding to his grief, he was out of the country when it happened. His youngest daughter, Jean, was diagnosed with severe epilepsy. In , when she was 29 years old, Jean died of a heart attack. For many years, Twain's relationship with middle daughter Clara was distant and full of quarrels.
In June , while Twain traveled, Livy died after a long illness. Kent Rasmussen. But absent or not, throughout 34 years of marriage, Twain had indeed loved his wife. Twain became somewhat bitter in his later years, even while projecting an amiable persona to his public. In private he demonstrated a stunning insensitivity to friends and loved ones.
When that failed he returned to reporting, and adopted his pseudonym, a name derived from the call for safe water from riverboat pilots. His journalism began to establish his reputation; he started lecturing and published his first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches in Two years later, The Innocents Abroad , the story of Twain's trip with a group of other Americans through Europe and the Holy Land its subtitle was The New Pilgrims' Progress was a bestseller, selling , copies within two years.
He followed it in with Roughing It , another successful travelogue, and for the next 20 years, Twain produced instant classics, including not only The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , but perennial favorites such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and The Prince and the Pauper , works of social criticism such as The Gilded Age and Following the Equator an early indictment of imperialist racism that deserves rediscovery , Life on the Mississippi , blending autobiography and social history, and The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson , a novel using the device of babies switched at birth to expose the malignant senselessness of American racism.
Across their disparate subjects and audiences, what unites Twain's works is his quintessential Americanness. In Twain's obituary, the San Francisco Examiner wrote that he was "curiously and intimately American. He was our very own". Twain went further. Living in Europe in the s, he wrote in his notebook: "Are you an American? No, I am not an American. I am the American. It isn't just that Twain's books remain as popular as they are critically esteemed, or that his themes — the individual and society, free-market capitalism and social justice, populism and snobbery, deception and honour, idealism and cynicism, freedom and slavery, wilderness and civilisation — represent such characteristically American preoccupations.
Twain was just as American in life, in his self-promotion, commercial ambition, pursuit of celebrity and narcissism. As a child, Twain's daughter Susy began a biography of her famous father, in which she reports his explanation for never attending church: "He couldn't bear to hear any one talk but himself, but [. Hemingway pronounced in the s that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn "; but Twain didn't invent only modern American literature, he invented modern American authorship, as well.
And now it turns out he also felt he'd reinvented modern autobiography — a favourite American genre, given its emphasis on hubristic individualism and self-invention — calling his new method, with characteristic modesty: "One of the most memorable literary inventions of the ages. I'm the only person who has ever found the right way to build an autobiography. More than businessman, inventor, showman or even writer, at heart Mark Twain was a speculator.
His instinctive grasp of branding and publicity was far ahead of his time, as he flung himself enthusiastically into 19th-century new media. Today he'd be blogging and tweeting his heart out — as long as he could monetise it. He sat for hundreds of daguerrotypes and photographs, displaying what he himself called a "talent for posturing" that suited the burgeoning cult of celebrity. Even his iconic white suit developed from commercial objectives: he first wore it to appear before Congress, arguing that copyright, which he viewed as a patent, should be extended in perpetuity.
It is no accident that so many of Twain's characters are hucksters and hustlers, or that deception and opportunism are abiding themes in his writing.
He was susceptible to get-rich-quick schemes: the ventures he invested in and promoted — even as he was writing his greatest books — included vineyards, a steam generator, a steam pulley, a watch company, an insurance company, marine telegraphy, a food supplement called Plasmon, a chalk engraving process called Kaolatype, self-adjusting suspenders and the Paige typesetting machine, which bankrupted him at the height of his fame and forced him back on to the lecture circuit to pay his debts, in part, it's been suggested, to protect the value of his "honourable" brand.
In fact, James Paige, the absurdly impractical and possibly fraudulent inventor of the machine, inspires the most uncensored moment in the first volume. Twain understood publicity so well that he was merely amused when Huck Finn was banned by libraries across the US; when it was banned in Omaha, Nebraska, for example, he sent a telegram to the local newspaper, observing facetiously: "I am tearfully afraid this noise is doing much harm. It has started a number of hitherto spotless people to reading Huck Finn [.
He wrote out of a tradition of tall tales; this is why he was particularly suited to travel writing, which allowed him to be anecdotal and digressive, without much regard to structure or plot. Huck Finn itself is travel writing, in which the raft-trip down the Mississippi provides the picaresque structure for an episodic tale, an Edenic journey away from civilisation, as well as an occasionally frightening glimpse of the all-too-human wilderness.
And it is the anecdotal conversationalist who, for better or worse, dominates the unexpurgated autobiography. After a scrupulous introduction from the editors, explaining Twain's methods, problems and many false starts, the first volume opens with all those false starts. There is a long article he wrote as a young reporter about a shipwreck, reprinted verbatim; extended sections on Ulysses S Grant, which read more like a projected Grant biography than a Twain autobiography; pages minutely describing the Villa di Quarto in Florence, and so on.
After pages of throat-clearing most of which will probably interest only specialists comes another title page: "Autobiography of Mark Twain. Twain was always a barometric writer, with a knack for registering contemporary social pressures in sharp-eyed aphorisms that weren't merely quotable, but often well ahead of their time.
His indictments of imperialism in Following the Equator , for example, read like post-colonialist mottos avant la lettre : "The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice"; "There are many humorous things in the world, among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages"; "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. But most of the outrage here is social and political, including startlingly contemporary denunciations of American military interventions abroad, and condemnations of a society increasingly dominated by corrupt corporations, greedy capitalists, and vested interests.
Writing of gilded age monopolists and robber barons, Twain's prescience is remarkable: he denounces Jay Gould, the financier and speculator, for example, as "the mightiest disaster which has ever befallen this country". He is equally critical of American foreign policy, condemning its imperialist ventures in Cuba and the Philippines and calling its soldiers "uniformed assassins".
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