Samuel Langhorne Clemens <30 November 1835 - April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain , is an American writer, humorist, businessman, publisher, and preacher. Among his novels are the Tom Sawyer Adventure (1875) and its sequel, The Huckleberry Finn Adventure (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel".
Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided arrangements for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn . He served an apprentice with a printer and then worked as a code maker, contributing articles to his sister Orion Clemens' newspaper. He later became a river boat pilot on the Mississippi River before heading west to join Orion in Nevada. He refers with humor because of his lack of success in mining, turning to journalism for the City of Virginia Regional Citizens. His funny story, "The Recalled Jumping Frog in Calaveras County", was published in 1865, based on the story he heard at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he spent some time as a miner. The short story attracted international attention and was even translated into French. His versatility and innuendo, in the form of prose and in speech, received praise from critics and colleagues, and he was a friend to European presidents, artists, industrialists and nobles.
Twain earned a lot of money from his writing and lectures, but he invested in a largely lost business - especially Paige Compositor, a type of mechanical device that failed because of its complexity and inappropriateness. He filed for bankruptcy behind this financial setback, but he finally overcame his financial problems with the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers. He chooses to pay all of his pre-bankruptcy creditors in full, even after he has no legal responsibility to do so.
Twain was born shortly after the appearance of Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" too; he died the day after the comet returned. He is hailed as "the greatest humor the country produces", and William Faulkner calls it "the father of American literature".
Video Mark Twain
Biography
Early life
Mark Twain was born to Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, the sixth child of seven siblings born of Jane (n. Lark, 1803-1890), who came from Kentucky, and John Marshall Clemens (1798-1847), who is from Virginia. His parents met when his father moved to Missouri, and they married in 1823. Twain was of Cornish, English, and Scottish-Irish descent. Only three siblings survived from childhood: Orion (1825-1897), Henry (1838-1858), and Pamela (1827-1904). Her brother Margaret (1830-1839) died when Twain was three years old, and his brother Benjamin (1832-1842) died three years later. His brother, Pleasant Hannibal (1828) died at the age of three weeks.
When he was four years old, the Twain family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port city on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional city of St. Louis. Petersburg on Tom Sawyer Adventure and Huckleberry Finn Adventure. Slavery was legal in Missouri at the time, and it became the theme in these writings. His father was a lawyer and judge, who died of pneumonia in 1847, when Twain was 11 years old. The following year, Twain left school after fifth grade to become a printer student. In 1851 he began working as a problem-maker, contributing funny articles and sketches to Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by Orion. When he was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, joined the newly formed International Tipography Union, the printer trade union. She educates herself in public libraries at night, finding more information than in a conventional school.
Twain described his childhood at Life on the Mississippi, stating that "there is only one permanent ambition" among his peers: being a Steamboatman.
The pilot is the grandest position of all. Pilots, even during trivial wages, have high salaries - from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay.
As Twain explains, the prestige of the pilot exceeds the captain. The pilot must:
... wake up a warm, personal acquaintance with every old mound and one-legged cotton tree and every obscure wooden pile that adorns the bank of this river for a thousand and two hundred miles; and more than that, must... really know where these things are in the dark
Steamboat pilot Horace E. Bixby took Twain as a pilot cub to teach him the river between New Orleans and St. Louis. Louis for $ 500, paid from Twain's first salary after graduation. Twain studied Mississippi, studied its landmarks, how to navigate its flow effectively, and how to read its constantly changing streams and channels, coral reefs, submerged tears, and rocks that would "destroy the life of the strongest ship ever floated." That was more than two years before he received his pilot's license. Piloting also gave him the pen name of "mark twain", the leader's scream for the depth of the river measured two fathoms (12 feet), which is safe water for a steamboat.
During the training, Samuel convinces his younger brother, Henry to work with him. Henry was killed on June 21, 1858, when their steamboat Pennsylvania exploded. Twain claimed to have foreseen this death in a dream a month earlier, which inspired his interest in parapsychology; he was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research. Twain felt guilty and refrained from taking responsibility for the rest of his life. He continued to work in the river and became a river pilot until the Civil War broke out in 1861, when traffic was restricted along the Mississippi River. At the beginning of the feud, he was briefly registered in the local Confederate unit. He then wrote a sketch of "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed," describing how he and his friends volunteered for Confederation two weeks before disbanding.
He then goes to Nevada to work for Orion, who is Nevada's Regional Secretary. Twain described the episode in his book Roughing It .
Travel
Orion became the secretary of Nevada County governor James W. Nye in 1861, and Twain joined him when he moved west. The brothers traveled over two weeks by postcars across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, visiting the Mormon community in Salt Lake City.
The Twain trip ends in the silver mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a miner in Comstock Lode. He failed as a miner and started working in the Virginia City Corporate Space newspaper, working under a friend, author Dan DeQuille. He first used his pen name here on February 3, 1863, when he wrote a funny travel account entitled "Letter From Carson - re: Joe Goodman; party at Gov. Johnson, music" and sign it "Mark Twain".
His experience in Western America inspired Roughing It , written in 1870-71 and published in 1872. His experience at the Angels Camp (in Calaveras County, California) provided materials for "Celebrated Jump Frogs in Calaveras County" (1865).
Twain moved to San Francisco in 1864, still as a journalist, and met writers like Bret Harte and Artemus Ward. She may be romantically involved with the poet Ina Coolbrith.
His first success as a writer came when his funny and funny story "The Jumping Frogs that Happened in Calaveras County" was published on November 18, 1865, in the weekly New York The Saturday Press, which brought him to national attention. A year later, he went to the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) as a reporter for the Sacramento Union. His letters to Union were very popular and became the basis for his first lecture.
In 1867, a local newspaper funded his trip to the Mediterranean above Quaker City, including a tour of Europe and the Middle East. He wrote a collection of travel papers that were later compiled as The Innocents Abroad (1869). It was on this journey that he met fellow passenger Charles Langdon, who showed him the image of his younger sister, Olivia. Twain later claimed to have fallen in love at first sight.
Upon returning to the United States, Twain was offered honorary membership in the secret societies of Yale University, Scroll and Key in 1868. His loyalty to "fellowship, moral and literary improvement, and charity" fitted him perfectly.
Marriage and children
Twain and Olivia Langdon relate throughout 1868. He rejected his first marriage proposal, but they married in Elmira, New York in February 1870, where he accompanied him and managed to overcome his father's early reluctance. He is from "a rich but liberal family"; through him, he meets with abolitionists, "socialists, principled atheists and activists for women's rights and social equality", including Harriet Beecher Stowe (neighbor next door to Hartford, Connecticut), Frederick Douglass, and writer and utopian socialist William Dean Howells, who became an old friend. The couple lived in Buffalo, New York, from 1869 to 1871. He owned a stake in the Buffalo Express newspaper and worked as an editor and writer. When they lived in Buffalo, their son Langdon died of diphtheria at the age of 19 months. They have three daughters: Susy (1872-1896), Clara (1874-1962), and Jean (1880-1909).
Twain moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut, where he arranged the construction of a house starting in 1873. In the 1870s and 1880s, the family ended up at Quarry Farm in Elmira, the home of Olivia's sister Susan Crane. In 1874, Susan conducted a study that was built separately from the main house so that Twain would have a quiet place to write. Also, she smokes a cigar constantly, and Susan does not want her to do it at her home.
Twain wrote many of his classic novels for 17 years at Hartford (1874-1891) and over 20 summers at Quarry Farm. They included The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life in Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889).
The couple's marriage lasted 34 years until Olivia's death in 1904. All the Clemens were buried in Woodlawn Elmira Cemetery.
Science and technology love
Twain was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Tesla, and both spent a lot of time together in the Tesla laboratory.
Twain patented three inventions, including "Adjustable and Released Raises for Clothes" (to replace suspenders) and historical trivia games. The most commercially successful is the self-paste clipping; the dried adhesive on the page only needs to be moistened before use. More than 25,000 were sold.
The Twain A Connecticut Yankee novel at King Arthur's Court (1889) presents a time traveler from the contemporary United States, using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. This type of storyline became a common feature of fictional subgenre science fiction history.
In 1909, Thomas Edison visited Twain at his home in Redding, Connecticut, and recorded it. Part of the tape was used in The Prince and the Pauper (1909), a two-reel short film. It is said that this is the only movie trailer in Twain.
Financial issues
Twain made a lot of money through his writing, but he lost a lot of money through investments. He invested most of his inventions and new technologies, especially in Paige typeetting machines. It's a beautifully engineered mechanical wonder that makes viewers awe while working, but it's vulnerable to damage. Twain spent $ 300,000 (equal to $ 8,000,000 in inflation-adjusted terms) between 1880 and 1894, but before that could be refined it became obsolete by Linotype. He lost most of the profits of his book, as well as most of his wife's legacy.
Twain also lost money through his publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company, who enjoyed the initial success of selling Ulysses S. Grant memos but failed shortly thereafter, losing money on Pope Leo XIII's biography. Less than 200 copies were sold.
Twain and his family closed their expensive homes in Hartford in response to a reduced income and moved to Europe in June 1891. William M. Laffan of The New York Sun and the McClure Newspaper Syndicate offered him the publication of a series of six European letters. Twain, Olivia, and their daughter, Susy, are all faced with health problems, and they believe that it would be worthwhile to visit the European baths. The family lived mainly in France, Germany, and Italy until May 1895, with longer spells in Berlin (winter 1891/92), Florence (autumn and winter of 1892/93), and Paris (winter and springs 1893/94 and 1894/95). ). During that period, Twain returned four times to New York because of his lasting business problems. He took a "cheap room" in September 1893 with $ 1.50 per day at The Players Club, which he had to keep until March 1894; meanwhile, he became "Belle of New York," in the words of biographer Albert Bigelow Paine.
Twain's writings and lectures allowed him to recover financially, combined with the help of a new friend. In the fall of 1893, he began a friendship with the financier Henry Huttleston Rogers, head of Standard Oil, who survived for the rest of his life. Rogers first made him file for bankruptcy in April 1894, then told him to transfer the copyright in his paper to his wife to prevent creditors from getting their holdings. Finally, Rogers takes over Twain's money until all his creditors are paid.
Twain accepted an offer from Robert Sparrow Smythe and embarked on a worldwide world tour tour throughout the year in July 1895 to pay off his creditors completely, though he was no longer under a legal obligation to do so. It was a long and difficult journey and he was very sick back then, mostly from the cold and the karbunkel. The first part of the itinerary took him across North America to British Columbia, Canada, until the second half of August. For the second part, he sailed across the Pacific Ocean. His lecture scheduled in Honolulu, Hawaii must be canceled due to the cholera epidemic. Twain went on to Fiji, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, India, Mauritius and South Africa. Three months in India became the core of his 712-page Following the Equator book. In the second half of July 1896, he sailed back to England, completing a world tour that began 14 months earlier.
Twain and his family spent four more years in Europe, mainly in England and Austria (October 1897 to May 1899), with longer spells in London and Vienna. Clara wants to learn piano under Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna. Unfortunately, Jean's health did not benefit from consulting with a specialist in Vienna, "Doctor City". His family moved to London in the spring of 1899, following the leadership of Poultney Bigelow who had good experience of being treated by Dr. Jonas Henrik Kellgren, a Swedish osteopathic practitioner in Belgravia. They were persuaded to spend the summer at the lake Kellgren's sanatorium in the village of Sanna, Sweden. When they returned in the fall, they continued treatment in London, until Twain was convinced by a lengthy inquiry in America that similar osteopathic skills were available there.
In the mid-1900s, he was the guest owner of the Hugh Gilzean-Reid newspaper at Dollis Hill House, located on the north side of London. Twain writes that he "never saw such a satisfying place, with its beautiful trees and stretch of the country, and everything that made life enjoyable, and all in the bus of the world's metropolis." He then returned to America in October 1900, after earning enough to repay his debt. In the winter of 1900/01, he became the most prominent opponent of imperialism in his country, raising this issue in his speeches, interviews and writings. In January 1901, he began serving as vice-president of the New York Anti-Imperialist League.
Speak engagement
Twain is in great demand as a keynote speaker, chatting funny like a modern stand-up comedy. He gave paid lectures to many male clubs, including Writer Club, Beefsteak Club, Vagabonds, White Friars, and Monday Evening Club of Hartford.
In the late 1890s, he spoke with the Savage Club in London and was elected a member of honor. She was told that only three people were honored, including the Prince of Wales, and she replied, "Well, that should make the Prince feel okay." He visited Melbourne and Sydney in 1895 as part of a world lecture tour. In 1897, he spoke with the Concordia Press Club in Vienna as a special guest, following diplomat Charlemagne Tower, Jr. He delivered the speech " Die Schrecken der Deutschen Sprache " ("The Terror of German Language") - in German - for the audience's great entertainment. In 1901, he was invited to speak at the University of the Cliosophic Literary Society at Princeton, where he became a member of honor.
Canadian Visits
In 1881, Twain was honored at a party in Montreal, Canada where he made reference to obtaining copyright. In 1883, he made a short visit to Ottawa, and he visited Toronto twice in 1884 and 1885 on a reading tour with George Washington Cable, known as the "Twins of Genius" tour.
The reason for Toronto's visit is to secure Canadian and British copyrights for his upcoming Huckleberry Finn Hackleberry Adventure, which he has alluded to on a visit to Montreal. The reason for Ottawa's visit is to get Canadian and British copyrights for Life in Mississippi . The publisher in Toronto had printed an unauthorized edition of his books at that time, before an international copyright agreement was established in 1891. It was sold in the United States as well as in Canada, depriving him of royalties. He estimated that the Belford Brothers edition of Tom Sawyer's Adventures alone had cost him ten thousand dollars. He unsuccessfully tried to secure the rights to The Prince and the Pauper in 1881, along with his Montreal trip. Finally, he received legal advice to register copyrights in Canada (for Canada and the UK) prior to publication in the United States, which would detain Canadian publishers from printing versions when the American edition was published. There is a requirement that copyright be registered to a Canadian population; he discussed this with his brief visit to the country.
Next life and death
Twain lived in his final years at 14 West 10th Street in Manhattan. He passed a period of deep depression that began in 1896 when his daughter Susy died of meningitis. The death of Olivia in 1904 and Jean on December 24, 1909, deepened the gloom. On May 20, 1909, his close friend Henry Rogers suddenly died. In 1906, Twain began his autobiography at North American Review . In April, he heard that his friend Ina Coolbrith had lost almost everything he had in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and he offered several photographs of signed portraits for sale for his benefit. To help Coolbrith further, George Wharton James visited Twain in New York and arranged a new portrait session. At first he refused, but he finally admitted that the four images produced were the best he had ever taken.
Twain formed a club in 1906 for girls whom he considered as a grandson called Angel Fish and Aquarium Club. About a dozen members range from 10 to 16. She exchanged letters with girls "Angel of Fish" and invited them to concerts and theaters and to play games. Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was "the ultimate pleasure in his life". In 1907, he met Dorothy Quick (aged 11) at the transatlantic junction, embarking on "a friendship that survived the day of his death".
The University of Oxford awarded Twain an honorary doctorate in letters in 1907.
Twain was born two weeks after Halley's closest approach at Comet in 1835; he said in 1909:
I came with Halley's Comet in 1835. It will come again next year, and I hope to go out with him. It would be the biggest disappointment of my life if I did not date Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are two irresponsible freaks; they come together, they must go together".
Twain predictions are accurate; he died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut, a day after the comet's closest approach to Earth.
After hearing Twain's death, President William Howard Taft said:
Mark Twain gives real - intellectual pleasures - to millions of people, and his works will continue to give pleasure to the millions of people who will come... Humor is an American, but he is almost equally appreciated by the English and the people of the country like his own people. He has made an enduring part of American literature.
Twain's funeral is in Brick Presbyterian Church on Fifth Avenue, New York. He is buried in his wife's family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York. The Langdon family plot is marked with a 12-foot-tall monument (two fathoms, or "mark twain") placed there by his surviving daughter, Clara. There is also a smaller headstone. He stated his preference for cremation (eg, in Mississippi Life), but he admitted that his surviving family would have the last word.
Officials in Connecticut and New York estimate Twain's real value at $ 471,000 ($ 12 million today).
Maps Mark Twain
Write
Overview
Twain began his career writing a light and humorous poem, but he became the author of history of pride, hypocrisy, and the act of killing humanity. In the middle of his career, he combines rich humor, strong narratives, and social criticism at Huckleberry Finn. He is an expert in expressing everyday speech and helping to create and popularize the typical American literature built on American themes and languages.
Much of his work has been suppressed several times for various reasons. The Huckleberry Finn adventure has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools, at least because it often uses the word "negro", commonly used in the pre-Civil War period in which the novel has been installed.
The complete bibliography of Twain's works is almost impossible to compile because of the many parts he writes (often in unclear newspapers) and his use of several different pen names. In addition, most of his speeches and speeches have been lost or unrecorded; thus, the compilation of Twain's work is an ongoing process. Researchers rediscovered material published recently in 1995 and 2015.
Initial journalism and travel notes
Twain wrote for the Virginia City Corporate Space newspaper in 1863 when he met lawyer Tom Fitch, editor of the competing newspaper Virginia Daily Union and known as the "silver tongue orator of the Pacific." He praised Fitch by giving him "the first lesson that really benefits" in writing. "When I first started teaching, and in my earlier writings," Twain then commented, "my only idea is to make comic capital out of everything I see and hear." In 1866, he presented his lectures on the Sandwich Islands to the crowds in Washoe City, Nevada. After that, Fitch told him:
Clemens, your course is great. It's fluent, moving, sincere. Throughout my life, I have never listened to the incredible descriptive narrative story. But you do one unforgivable sin - the unpardonable sin. It is a sin that you can not do anymore. You're closing down the most eloquent description, with which you've incorporated your audience toward the most intense interest, with a terrible piece of anti-climax that erases all the really good effects you generate.
It was in these days that Twain became the author of the Sagebrush School; he is known later as the most prominent in this genre. His first important work was "The Beautifulest Jumping Frog in Calaveras County," published in New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. After the popularity boom, Sacramento Union assigned him to write a letter about his travel experience. The first trip he took for this job was to ride the Ajax steamer on his maiden voyage to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). Meanwhile, he wrote letters to newspapers intended for publication, recording his experience with humor. These letters proved to be the origin of his work with the San Francisco newspaper Alta California , which set him as a traveling correspondent for a journey from San Francisco to New York City via the Panama islands.
On June 8, 1867, he sailed on the Quaker City cruiser for five months, and this trip resulted in The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress . In 1872, he published his second literary work, Roughing It, as a record of his journey from Missouri to Nevada, the next life in West America, and his visit to Hawaii. The book blew up American and Western societies in the same way that Innocents criticized countries in Europe and the Middle East. His next job was The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, his first attempt at writing a novel. The book is also famous for it's the only collaboration, written with its neighbor, Charles Dudley Warner.
Next work Twain draws her experience on the Mississippi River. The Old Times in Mississippi was a series of sketches published at Atlantic Monthly in 1875 which featured his disappointment with Romanticism. The Old Times finally became the starting point for Life in Mississippi .
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
The next major Twain publication was the Tom Sawyer Adventure , which depicted his youth in Hannibal. Tom Sawyer is modeled in Twain as a child, with traces of school friends John Briggs and Will Bowen. The book also introduces Huckleberry Finn in a supporting role, based on Twain's childhood friend Tom Blankenship.
The Prince and the Pauper is not well received, apart from the common storyline in movies and literature today. This book tells the story of two boys born on the same day who are physically identical, acting as social commentaries as the prince and the poor swap places. Twain has embarked on the Huckleberry Finn adventure (which he consistently has problem solving) and has completed his travel book A Tramp Abroad, which describes his journey through central and southern Europe.
Twain's next major work is the Huckleberry Finn Adventure, which confirms him as a noted American writer. Some call it the first Great American Novel, and the book has become a required reading in many schools across the United States. Huckleberry Finn is a branch of Tom Sawyer and has a more serious tone than its predecessor. Four hundred pages of manuscripts were written in mid-1876, right after the publication of Tom Sawyer . The last fifth of Huckleberry Finn is subject to much controversy. Some people say that Twain experienced a "nerve failure," as criticized by Leo Marx. Ernest Hemingway once said about Huckleberry Finn :
If you read it, you should stop where Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real goal. The rest are just cheating.
Hemingway also writes in the same essay:
All modern American literature comes from a single book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn .
Near the completion of Huckleberry Finn , Twain wrote Life on the Mississippi, which is said to have greatly affected the novel. The travel work recounts Twain's memories and new experiences after a 22-year absence from the Mississippi River. In it, he also explained that "Mark Twain" is a call made when the boat is in safe water, showing the depth of two fathoms (12 feet or 3.7 meters).
Later write
Twain made President Ulysses S. Grant's Memoirs through her publisher, Charles L. Webster & amp; The company, owned jointly with Charles L. Webster, his niece for marriage.
At this time he also wrote "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" for The Century Magazine. This section details his two-week assignment in a Confederate militia during the Civil War. He further focuses on A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court, written in the same historical fictional style as The Prince and the Pauper . A Connecticut Yankee shows the absurdity of political and social norms by placing them in the court of King Arthur. The book began in December 1885, then stored several months later until the summer of 1887, and finally completed in the spring of 1889.
The next large-scale job is the Pudd'nhead Wilson , which he wrote quickly, as he tried desperately to prevent bankruptcy. From 12 November to 14 December 1893, Twain wrote 60,000 words for the novel. Critics have pointed to this settlement in a hurry as the cause of the grainy organization of the novel and the constant disruption of the plot. The novel also contains the story of two boys born on the same day who changed positions in life, such as The Prince and the Pauper . It was first published in serial in Century Magazine and, when it was finally published in book form, Pudd'nhead Wilson appeared as the main title; However, "text" makes the whole title unreadable: Tragedy Pudd'nhead Wilson and Extraordinary Twins .
Twain's next attempt was a work of straight fiction that he called the Personal Records of Joan of Arc and dedicated to his wife. He had long said that this was the job he was most proud of, despite the criticism he received for it. The book has been her dream since childhood, and she claims that she has found a script detailing Joan of Arc's life when she was a teenager. This is another piece that he believes will save his publishing company. His financial adviser Henry Huttleston Rogers dropped the idea and got Twain out of the business, but the book was still published.
To pay bills and keep his business projects afloat, Twain began writing articles and comments angrily, with diminishing returns, but that was not enough. He filed for bankruptcy in 1894. During this period of financial difficulties, he published several literary reviews in newspapers to help meet his needs. He famously mocked James Fenimore Cooper in his article detailing Cooper's "Literary Offenses". He became a very vocal critic of other writers and other critics; he suggested that, before praising Cooper's work, Thomas Lounsbury, Brander Matthews, and Wilkie Collins "should have read some of it".
George Eliot, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson also fell under Twain's attacks during this period, beginning around 1890 and continuing until his death. He describes what he considers to be "quality writing" in several letters and essays, in addition to providing a source for the "tooth and claw" style of literary criticism. He emphasizes conclusions, the usability of the word choice, and realism; he complained, for example, that the Deerslayer Cooper states realistically but has some drawbacks. Ironically, some of his own works were later criticized for lack of continuity ( Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ) and organizations ( Pudd'nhead Wilson ).
Twain's wife died in 1904 when the couple lived in Villa at Quarto in Florence. After some time has passed, he published several works whose wife, editor and censorship throughout his marriage life, have been underestimated. the Mysterious Stranger is probably the best known, illustrating Satan's various visits to the earth. This particular work is not published in Twain's life. The manuscripts include three versions, written between 1897 and 1905: the so-called versions of Hannibal, Eseldorf, and the Print Shop. The resulting confusion led to the extensive publication of the jumbled version, and only recently has the original version become available as Twain wrote it.
Twain's last work is his autobiography, which he dictated and thought would be very entertaining if he went with his behavior and tangents in a non-chronological order. Some archivists and compilers have rearranged biography into a more conventional form, eliminating some of the humor and flow of Twain's book. The first volume of autobiography, over 736 pages, was published by the University of California in November 2010, 100 years after his death, as Twain wanted. Immediately became the best seller of the unexpected, making Twain one of the few authors who published new bestsellers in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
Sensor
Twain's work has been subject to censorship efforts. According to Stuart (2013), "Leading this prohibition campaign, in general, is a religious or individual organization in a position of influence - not so many working librarians, who have been implanted with American" library spirit "that respects intellectual freedom (within limits of course ) ". In 1905, the Brooklyn Public Library banned both the Huckleberry Finn Adventures and the Tom Sawyer Adventure from the children's department because of their language.
Views
Twain's view became more radical as he grew older. In a letter to friends and coauthor William Dean Howells in 1887 he admitted that his views had changed and developed over his lifetime, referring to one of his favorite works:
When I completed Carlyle's French Revolution in 1871, I was a Girondin; every time I read it because, I have read it differently - influenced and changed, bit by bit, by life and environment... and now I put the book down once again, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte! And not the pale Sansculotte, no character, but Marat.
Anti-imperialist
Before 1899, Twain was a persistent imperialist. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, he spoke strongly for the sake of America in the Hawaiian Islands. He said war with Spain in 1898 was the "most valuable" war ever. However, in 1899, he reversed. At the New York Herald , October 16, 1900, Twain described his political transformation and resurrection, in the context of the Philippine-American War, against anti-imperialism:
I want the American eagle to go screaming to the Pacific... Why not spread its wings to the Philippines, I ask myself?... I say to myself, These are the people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as possible, give them their own government and state, create miniature American Constitutions in the Pacific, start a new republic to replace it among the free nations of the world. For me it is a very important task that we have talked about ourselves.
But I have been thinking of more and more, ever since, and I have read carefully the Paris treaty [which ended the Spanish-American War], and I have seen that we do not mean to be free, but to subdue the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.
It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and obligation to get people free, and let them face their own domestic questions in their own way. So I am anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having an eagle put a claw on another soil.
During Boxer's rebellion, Mark Twain said that "Boxer is a patriot, he loves his country better than he does other people's nations, I wish him success."
From 1901, shortly after he returned from Europe, until his death in 1910, Twain was the vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, who opposed the Filipino annexation by the United States and had "tens of thousands of members". He wrote many political pamphlets for organizations. The Incident in the Philippines was posthumously published in 1924, in response to the Moro Crater Massacre, in which six hundred Moros were killed. Many of his neglected and previously unasked writings on anti-imperialism appeared for the first time in book form in 1992.
Twain is critical of imperialism in other countries as well. In Following the Equator , Twain expressed "hatred and condemnation of imperialism of all the lines". He was very critical of the European imperialists, especially Cecil Rhodes, who greatly expanded the British Empire, and Leopold II, King of Belgium. King Leopold's Soliloquy is a stinging political allusion to his personal colony, Congo-free State. Reports of humiliating exploitation and harassment led to widespread international protests in the early 1900s, arguably the first large-scale human rights movement. In soliloquy, the King argues that bringing Christianity to the state exceeds a little starvation. The Leopold rubber collector was tortured, disabled and slaughtered until the movement forced Brussels to stop him.
During the Philippine-American War, Twain wrote a short peace love story titled The War Prayer, which states that the Christian and humanist teachings on love are incompatible with the behavior of war. It was submitted to Harper's Bazaar for publication, but on March 22, 1905, the magazine rejected the story as "not suitable enough for women's magazines". Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend, Daniel Carter Beard, to whom he had read the story, "I do not think that prayer will be published in my day. Because he has an exclusive contract with Harper & amp; Brother, Twain can not publish Prayer of War elsewhere; it remained unpublished until 1923. It was reissued as a campaign material by protesters of the Vietnam War.
Twain admitted that he initially sympathized with the more moderate Girondins of the French Revolution and later shifted his sympathy to the more radical Sansculottes, even identifying himself as "a Marat". Twain supported the revolutionaries in Russia against the reformists, arguing that the tsar had to be removed by violent means, for which peace would not succeed. He summed up his views on the revolution in the following statement:
I am said to be a revolutionary in sympathy, birth, glorification, and principle. I am always on the side of revolutionaries, for there is no revolution except that there are some oppressive and intolerable conditions that must be transformed into revolutions.
Civil rights
Twain was a strong supporter of the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves, even saying, "The Lincoln Proclamation... not only liberates black slaves, but also liberates the white man." He argues that non-whites do not accept justice in the United States, once said, "I have seen Chinese people being tortured and persecuted by all means, cowards possible for the discovery of degraded nature... but I have never seen a Chinese corrected in court for wrongs committed to him ". He paid at least one black person to attend Yale Law School and to other blacks to attend a southern university to become minister.
Twain's sympathetic view of race is not reflected in his early writings on American Indians. Among them, Twain wrote in 1870:
His heart is a garbage tank of falsehood, betrayal, and a bad and evil instinct. With him, gratitude is an unknown emotion; and when someone does good to him, it's safest to keep his face in his direction, lest the gift be an arrow in the back. Accepting help from him means taking on debt you can never pay for his satisfaction, even if you go bankrupt for yourself. Rubbish of the earth!
As a counterpoint, Twain's essay on "The Literary Offenses of Phenimore Cooper" offers a more gracious view of the Indians. "No, other Indians will notice these things, but the Indian Cooper have never noticed anything, Cooper thinks they are extraordinary beings to watch for, but he is almost always wrong about his Indians. among them." In his journey later on following the Equator (1897), Twain observes that in colonies around the world, "the savages" are always harmed by "whites" in the most cruel ways, such as "robbery. " , humiliation, and slow, slow killings, through poverty and whiskey of whites ", the conclusion is that" there are many funny things in the world, among them the idea of ​​a white man that he is less savage than any other savage. " a phrase that captures his East Indian experience, he writes, "As far as I can judge nothing is left, either by humans or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun sees in its lap. every prospect is fun, and just a vile human being. "
Twain is also a strong supporter of women's rights and an active campaign for women's suffrage. His "Voting for Women" speech, in which he emphasized granting the right to vote for women, is considered one of the most famous in history.
Helen Keller benefited from Twain's support when she pursued her college education and publication irrespective of her financial limitations and limitations. Both were friends for about 16 years.
Labor
Twain wrote excitedly about the union in the riverboat industry on Life on the Mississippi, read in the union hall a few decades later. He supported the labor movement, especially one of the most important unions, the Labor Knights. In a speech to them, he said:
Who is the oppressor? Little: Kings, capitalists, and a handful of superintendents and other superintendents. Who is oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; precious people; workers; those who make bread eaten with empty hands and useless.
Religion
Twain is a Presbyterian. He is critical of organized religion and certain elements of Christianity through his later life. He writes, for example, "Faith trusts what you know is not so," and "If Christ is here now, there is one thing he will not do - a Christian". With anti-Catholic sentiment rampant in 19th-century America, Twain noted he was "educated to be hostile to all things Catholic". As an adult, he engages in religious discussion and attends worship, his theology develops as he wrestles with the death of a loved one and with his own death.
Twain generally avoids publishing his most controversial opinions about religion in his lifetime, and they are known from later essays and stories. In the essay of the Three Statements of the 80s in the 1880s, Twain declared that he believed in Almighty God, but not in messages, revelations, scriptures such as Bible, Regret, or retribution in the afterlife. He declared that "God's goodness, justice, and grace are manifested in His work", but also that "the universe is governed by a strict and eternal law", which determines the "little things", as it died in plague. At other times, he writes or speaks in ways contrary to the strict deis's view, for example, clearly expressing his belief in Fate. In later writings in the 1890s, he was less optimistic about God's goodness, observing that "if our Creator is almighty for good or evil, He is not in his right mind." At other times, he supposes cynically that perhaps God has created the world with all its torments for some of his own purposes, but instead does not care about humanity, which is too trivial and unimportant to deserve His attention.
In 1901, Twain criticized Dr.'s missionary actions. William Scott Ament (1851-1909) because Ament and other missionaries have collected compensation from Chinese subjects after the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. Twain's response to hearing the Ament method was published at the North American Review in February 1901: > To the Dwelling in the Dark , and dealt with examples of imperialism in China, South Africa, and with the US occupation of the Philippines. A subsequent article, "To My Missionary Critics" published in The North American Review in April 1901, relentlessly continued its assault, but with the focus shifting from Ament to his missionary superiors, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
After his death, the Twain family suppressed some of his highly disrespectful works against conventional religions, especially Epistles from Earth, which were not published until his daughter Clara reversed her position in 1962 in response to Soviet propaganda. about tax cuts. Anti-religion The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916. Little Bessie, a story that mocks Christianity, was first published in the 1972 collection of Mark Twain's Fables of Man .
He raised money to build the Presbyterian Church in Nevada in 1864.
Twain creates a respectful portrayal of Joan of Arc, a subject she has been obsessed with for forty years, studied for a dozen years and spent two years writing about her. In 1900 and again in 1908 he stated, "I love Joan of Arc the best of all my books, this is the best".
Those who knew Twain well at the end of his life told him that he was living on the matter of eternity, his daughter Clara said: "Sometimes she believes death ends everything, but most of the time she feels confident about life outside."
Twain's view of religion arose in his last Autobiography of Mark Twain , a publication that began in November 2010, 100 years after his death. In it, he said:
There is one important thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and prey-like - in our country in particular and in all other Christian countries on a slightly modified level - that is still a hundred times better than Bible Christianity, with his extraordinary crime - the invention of hell. Measured by our Christianity today, such bad, hypocritical as that, empty and empty like that, both God and Son are a Christian, or qualify for a high enough place. We are a terrible religion. The world's fleets can swim comfortably in innocent blood that has been spilled.
Twain is a Freemason. She belongs to Polar Star Lodge. 79 A.F. & amp; A.M., based in St. Louis. He was initiated Entered Apprentice on May 22, 1861, graduating to the Fellow Craft level on June 12, and was appointed to the Master Mason level on July 10.
Twain visited Salt Lake City for two days and met with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They also gave him the Book of Mormon. He then wrote in Roughing It about the book:
This book seems to be merely a detail of the prosy of fictional history, with the Old Testament for the model; followed by the dull plagiarism of the New Testament.
Vivisection
Twain opposed the practice of vivisection in his day. Objections are not scientifically based but more ethical. He specifically mentions the pain inflicted on animals as the basis for his opposition:
I am not interested in knowing whether conception produces a favorable outcome for mankind or not.... The pain inflicted on an uncivilized animal is the basis of my hostility towards it, and to me enough justification of enmity without looking further.
Pen name
Twain uses a different pen name before deciding on "Mark Twain". He signed a humorous and imaginative sketch as "Josh" until 1863. In addition, he used the pen name "Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass" for a series of funny letters.
He maintains that his pen name is primarily derived from his years working on the Mississippi riverside, where two fathoms, depths indicating safe water for boat trips, are a measure on the sounding line. Twain is the ancient term for "two", as in "The veil of the temple is split in two." The cries of the riverboatman are "mark twain" or, more fully, "with a sign of twain", meaning "by the mark [on the line], [the depth] two [fathoms]" ie "Water is 12 feet (3.7 m) and safe to pass. "
Twain claims that his famous pen name is not entirely his invention. In Miss Life in Mississippi, he writes:
Captain Isaiah's salesman is not a change or literary capacity, but he usually writes short paragraphs on simple practical information about the river, and signs it "MARK TWAIN", and passes it to New Orleans Picayune . They are linked to the stage and river conditions, and are accurate and valuable;... By the time the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I am a fresh new reporter, and need a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient marine vessel, and had done my best to keep it as it was in his hand - a sign and symbol and ensured that whatever found in his company could be at stake as a petrified truth; how do i succeed, it will not be simple to say.
Twain's account of the questioner's name has been questioned by several people with the suggestion that "mark twain" refers to the running bar tab that Twain will regularly wear while drinking at John Piper's saloon in Virginia City, Nevada. Samuel Clemens himself responded to this suggestion by saying, "Mark Twain is a nom de plume of one of Isaiah's Sales Captains, who used to write news streams on it for Picayune New Orleans.He died in 1869 and because he could no longer need his signature , I put a hard hand on it without asking permission from the remnants of the owner.That is the history of the nom de plume I bear. "
In his autobiography, Twain writes further about the use of "Mark Twain" by the Seller Captain:
I was a child pilot on the Mississippi River at the time, and one day I wrote a rough and crude satire flattened by Captain Isaiah's Sellers, the oldest steamship pilot on the Mississippi River, and the most respected, respected, and respected. Over the years, he has occasionally written short paragraphs on rivers and changes that have been experienced under his observations for fifty years, and has signed this paragraph "Mark Twain" and published it in St. Journal. Louis and New Orleans. In my satire I made a rough game of his memories. It was a bad bad performance, but I did not know it, and the pilots did not know it. The pilot thought it was brilliant. They are jealous of the Sellers, because when the gray heads among them like their pride by detailing the hearing of the young artisans of the wonders they have seen in the past on the river, Sellers always tend to enter at a psychological moment. and exterminate them with their own miracles that make their little miracle appear pale and sick. However, I have told all this in the "Old Times in Mississippi." The pilots handed me a remarkable allusion to a river reporter, and it was published in True Delta New Orleans. The poor old Captain of the Captain was deeply hurt. He had never been laughed at before; she's sensitive, and she never forgets the pain I've stolen and stupid for her pride. I am proud of my performance for a while, and think it is very beautiful, but I have changed my opinion about it for a long time. The seller never publishes another paragraph or ever uses his nom de guerre again.
Inheritance and depiction
The trademark white setting
While Twain is often depicted in a white suit, a modern representation that shows that he wore it all his life was unfounded. The evidence shows that Twain began wearing white clothing on the lecture circuit, after the death of his wife Olivia ("Livy") in 1904. However, there is also evidence to suggest he was wearing a white suit before 1904. In 1882, he sent a photograph. of himself in a white suit for 18-year-old Edward W. Bok, publisher of the Ladies Home Journal, with a handwritten dated note. It eventually became his trademark, as illustrated in anecdotes about this eccentricity (as he wore a white summer suit to a Congressional hearing during the winter). McMasters' The Mark Twain Encyclopedia states that Twain has not been wearing a white suit in the last three years except in one speech.
In his autobiography, Twain wrote his initial experiment using white out-of-season:
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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