Mark Twain - Biography

Career overview

Twain's greatest contribution to American literature is generally considered to be his novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. As Ernest Hemingway once said:

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech, and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Such fascination can be seen in Twain's book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which features a time traveler from the America of Twain's day, using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England.

Mark Twain was opposed to vivisection of any kind, not on a scientific basis, but rather an ethical one, in which he states that no sentient being should be made to suffer for another without consent.

From 1901 until his death in 1910, Twain was vice president of the American Anti-Imperialist League. Many but not all of Mark Twain's neglected and previously uncollected writings on anti-imperialism appeared for the first time in book form in 1992.

From the time of its publication there have been occasional attempts to ban Huckleberry Finn from various libraries because Twain's use of local color is offensive to some people.

Many of Mark Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons.

At least Twain saw 1601 published during his lifetime. Brothers, Mark Twain could not publish The War Prayer elsewhere;

In later years, Twain's family suppressed some of his work which was especially irreverent toward conventional religion, notably Letters from the Earth, which was not published until 1962. The anti-religious The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916, although there is some scholarly debate as to whether Twain actually wrote the most familiar version of this story. Twain was critical of organized religion and certain elements of the Christian religion through most of the end of his life, though he never renounced Presbyterianism

Perhaps most controversial of all was Mark Twain's 1879 humorous talk at the Stomach Club in Paris, entitled Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism, which concluded with the thought, "If you must gamble your lives sexually, don't play a lone hand too much."

Financial matters

Although Twain made a substantial amount of money through his writing, he squandered much of it through bad investments, mostly through new inventions.

Legacy

His birthplace is preserved in Florida, Missouri, and the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri, is one of the most popular museums because it provided the setting for much of Twain's work.

Several schools are named after Twain. One school, Twain Elementary School in Houston, has a statue of Twain sitting on a bench.

Pen names

Clemens tried different pen names before deciding on Mark Twain.

Clemens maintained that his primary pen name, "Mark Twain," came from his years working on Mississippi riverboats, where two fathoms (12 ft, approximately 3.7 m) or "safe water" was measured on the sounding line. The riverboatman's cry was "mark twain" or, more fully, "by the mark twain" ("twain" is an archaic term for two). "By the mark twain" meant "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two fathoms". In Chapter 50 of Life on the Mississippi he wrote:

Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them "MARK TWAIN," and give them to the New Orleans Picayune.

Regardless of the source of the name, "Mark Twain," the alter ego of Samuel Clemens, was "born" in the office of the Nevada Territorial Enterprise, when the name first appeared on an article published on February 2 or February 3 of 1863.

Bibliography

Further reading

Works

Life

Sellers of Mark Twain First Edition books

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