Twain, Mark Twain, Mark Twin, MarkTwain, Mark

"Samuel Langhorne Clemens" (November 30, 1835-April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name "Mark Twain", was a famous and popular American humorist, writer and lecturer. He was also a steamboat pilot, gold prospector, and journalist. At his peak, he was probably the most popular American celebrity of his time. William Faulkner wrote he was "the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs."

His name was derived from the shout used to mark how deep the water was in steamships-"Mark Twain!" in other words, mark two fathoms.

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Career overview

Twain's greatest contribution to American literature is ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn''.Ernest Hemingway said:

: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.

Also popular are ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'', ''The Prince and the Pauper'', ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' and the non-fictional ''Life on the Mississippi''.

Twain began as a writer of light humorous verse; he ended as a grim, almost profane chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and acts of killing committed by mankind.At mid-career, with ''Huckleberry Finn'', he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism in a way almost unrivaled in world literature.

Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech, and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature, built on American themes and language.

Twain had a fascination with science and scientific inquiry. Twain developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Tesla. They spent quite a bit of time together from time to time (in Tesla's laboratory, among other places). ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' featured a time traveller from the America of Twain's day who used his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England.

Twain was a major figure in the Anti-Imperialist League which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States.He wrote "Incident in the Philippines", posthumously published in 1924, in response to the Moro Crater Massacre, in which six hundred Moros were killed.

The name "Mark Twain" is a pun reference to a riverboat depth measurement indicating two fathoms (12 ft or 3.7 m), or "safe water." Some believe that the name "Mark Twain" was brought on by his bad drinking habits, and not by his time as a riverboat pilot. He also used the pseudonym "Sieur Louis de Conte" for his fictional autobiography of Joan of Arc.

In recent years, there have been occasional attempts to ban ''Huckleberry Finn'' from various libraries, because Twain's use of local color offends some people. Although Twain was against racism and imperialism far in front of public sentiment of his time, some with only superficial familiarity of his work have condemned it as racist for its accurate depiction of the language in common use in the United States in the 19th century. Expressions that were used casually and unselfconsciously then are often perceived today as racism (in present times, such racial epithets are far more visible and condemned).Twain himself would probably be amused by these attempts; in 1885, when a library in Massachusetts banned the book, he wrote to his publisher, "They have expelled Huck from their library as 'trash suitable only for the slums'.That will sell 25,000 copies for us for sure."

Many of Mark Twain's works have been suppressed at times for one reason or another. 1880 saw the publication of an anonymous slim volume entitled ''1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors.'' Twain was among those rumored to be the author, but the issue was not settled until 1906, when Twain acknowledged his literary paternity of this scatological masterpiece.

Twain at least saw ''1601'' published during his lifetime. Twain wrote an anti-war article entitled ''The War Prayer'' during the Spanish-American War. It was submitted for publication, but on March 22, 1905, Harper's Bazaar rejected it as "not quite suited to a woman's magazine." Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to 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." Because he had an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers, Mark Twain could not publish "The War Prayer" elsewhere and it remained unpublished until 1923.

In his later life Twain's family suppressed some of his work which was especially irreverent towards conventional religion, notably Letters from the Earth, which was not published until 1942.

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'' (masturbation), which concluded with the thought "If you must gamble your lives sexually, don't play a lone hand too much." This talk was not published until 1943, and then only in a limited edition of fifty copies.

Twain's fortunes then began to decline; in his later life, Twain was a very depressed man, but still capable. Twain was able to respond "The report of my death is an exaggeration" in the ''New York Journal'', June 2nd 1897.He lost 3 out of 4 of his children, and his beloved wife, Olivia Langdon, before his death in 1910. He also had some very bad times with his businesses. His publishing company ended up going bankrupt, and he lost thousands of dollars on one typesetting machine that was never finished. He also lost a great deal of revenue on royalties from his books being plagiarized before he even had a chance to publish them himself.

Twain's Hartford, Connecticut home is a museum and National Historic Landmark, known as The Mark Twain House. Twain also lived in the latter part of the 19th century in Elmira, New York where he had met his wife, and had many close ties.

The small town of Hannibal, Missouri is another town that features many Mark Twain attractions including a boyhood house of his and the caves he used to explore that feature in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Mark Twain as a character

* Hal Holbrook famously portrayed Mark Twain in a one-man show on stage and on television

*Sam Clemens is a character in Philip José Farmer's Riverworld.

*The journalist Clemens makes an appearance in Neil Gaiman's comic book series ''The Sandman'', in issue #31, ''Three Septembers and a January'', where he is proclaimed Royal Storyteller by the Emperor of the United States, Norton I.

*Samuel Clemens is a character in the ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'' episodes "Time's Arrow," parts I and II.

*Robert A. Heinlein modelled the father of Maureen in ''To Sail Beyond the Sunset'' after Mark Twain.

* Major character in ''The Adventures of Mark Twain,'' a claymation.

* Samuel Clemens arrives in Virginia City in an episode of ''Bonanza'' as a reporter who causes some trouble for the Cartwrights.

Additional works by Twain

* ''The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories'' (fiction)

* ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (fiction)

* ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (fiction)

* ''Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven'' (fiction)

* ''The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County'' (fiction)

* ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' (fiction)

* ''Following the Equator'' (non-fiction travel)

* ''The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today'' (fiction)

* ''A Horse's Tale'' (fiction)

* ''Innocents Abroad'' (non-fiction travel)

* ''King Leopold's Soliloquy'' (political satire)

* ''Life on the Mississippi'' (non-fiction)

* ''The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg'' (fiction)

* ''The Mysterious Stranger'' (fiction, published posthumously)

* ''The Prince and the Pauper'' (fiction)

* ''Pudd'n'head Wilson'' (fiction)

* ''Roughing It'' (non-fiction)

* ''Tom Sawyer Abroad'' (fiction)

* ''Tom Sawyer Detective'' (fiction)

* ''A Tramp Abroad'' (non-fiction travel)

* ''What Is Man?'' (essay)

"See also:" Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

External links

*Mark Twain quotes at Wikiquote

*Ever the Twain Shall Meet,A guide to Mark Twain on the Web

*Web directory of Mark Twain e-texts from DMOZ

*The Works of Mark Twain,Chapter-indexed, searchable versions of Twain's works.

*Project Gutenberg, where more than 60 works of Twain's are freely available.

*Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla: Thunder and Lightning (PDF)

*Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies

* Full text of the biography ''Mark Twain'' by Archibald Henderson

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html for details. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Mark Twain.

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 Mark Twain in the News
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2. 1900's Centenarians Reflect on 1800s - 28 Aug 04 - ABC News
- Three centuries will be spanned by the lives of more than a score of men and women in the United States, provided these centenarians hear the All's well of 1901. ...

3. Cheat's guide to Joyce's Ulysses - 16/06/2004 - BBC News
Never read Ulysses? Now you don't have to. All you need to know about James Joyce's masterpiece.

4. TO BE... OR HUCKABEE - - www.nypost.com
< tr Search Archives TO BE OR HUCKABEE By MEGAN LEHMANN September 26 2004 Dustin Hoffman has been mulling over life the universe and everything a lot lately - and not just because his latest film the absurdist comedy I Love Huckabees has him

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6. How celebrity hit the big time - 04/04/2003 - BBC News
A look at how fame and celebrity grew throughout the late 1900s to the global phenomenon it reached during the 1990s.

7. Season looks bright for theater fans - - www.borderlandnews.com
Archives Election 2004 Special reports Living Sunday September 26 2004 Season looks bright for theater fans Kim Roedl El Paso Times Linda Stelter El Paso Times Rafaela Graffos as Queen Eleanor Alexander Herndon as King Henry and Abraham Villa

8. How New York Welcomed The New Century - 28 Aug 04 - ABC News
- This is the last day of the Nineteenth Century. Tomorrow the Twentieth begins, with all its promises.

9. Heaven on the half shell - 21/10/2002 - BBC News
Alistair reflects on his favourite city - San Francisco

10. Excerpt: Defining ‘Hip’ - - www.msnbc.msn.com
                              Web Search            Search MSNBC The Oakland soul group Tower of Power asked the question in a 1973 song called “What Is Hip � The band had a reputation as wordsmiths inventing

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 Mark Twain on the Web
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19. mark twain Resources on the World Wide Web
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20. mark twain - Biography and Works
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