Download or read book Mark Twain s Other Woman written by Laura Skandera Trombley and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-03-08 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laura Skandera Trombley, the preeminent Twain scholar at work today, reveals the never-before-read letters and daily journals of Isabel Lyon, Mark Twain’s last personal secretary. For six years, Isabel Lyon was responsible for running the aging Man in White’s chaotic household, nursing him through several illnesses and serving as his adoring audience. But after a dramatic breakup of their relationship, Twain ranted in personal letters that she was “a liar, a forger, a thief, a hypocrite, a drunkard, a sneak, a humbug, a traitor, a conspirator, a filthy-minded and salacious slut pining for seduction.” For decades, biographers omitted Isabel from the official Twain history at his decree. But now, the truth of the split is exposed at last in a story that sheds light on a lionized author’s final decade.
Download or read book Mark Twain in the Company of Women written by Laura E. Skandera Trombley and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1997-02 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The field of Mark Twain biography has been dominated by men, and Samuel Clemens himself - riverboat pilot, Western correspondent, silver prospector, world traveler - has been traditionally portrayed as a man's man. The publication of Laura E. Skandera-Trombley's Mark Twain in the Company of Women, however, marks a significant departure from conventional scholarship. Skandera-Trombley, the first woman to write a scholarly biography of Mark Twain, contends that Clemens intentionally surrounded himself with women, and that his capacity to produce extended fictions had almost as much to do with the environment shaped by his female family as with the talent and genius of the writer himself. Women helped Clemens to define his boundaries, both personal and literary. Women shaped his life, edited his books, and provided models for his fictional characters. Clemens read and corresponded with female authors, and often actively promoted their careers. Skandera-Trombley seeks to combine a biographical study of Clemens's life with his beloved wife, Olivia (Livy) Langdon, and their three daughters, Susy, Clara, and Jean, with new readings of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. Several crucial areas are investigated: the nature of Clemens's family participation in his writing process, the degree to which their experiences as women during the mid- and late nineteenth century affected his writing, and the extent to which the loss of his family may have impeded and ultimately ended his ability to write lengthy narratives. Skandera-Trombley points out that in marrying Livy, Clemens not only joined a family of substantial means, but also entered one active in thesuffragist, abolitionist, and other reformist movements, which had deep roots in the progressive community of Elmira, New York. Mark Twain in the Company of Women will be of interest to Twain scholars and readers as well as students in American studies, women's studies, nineteenth-century history, and political and cultural studies.
Download or read book Mark Twain s Autobiography written by Mark Twain and published by . This book was released on 1924 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Twain s End written by Lynn Cullen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In March of 1909, Mark Twain cheerfully blessed the wedding of his private secretary, Isabel V. Lyon, and his business manager, Ralph Ashcroft. One month later, he fired both, wrote a ferocious 429-page rant about the pair, and then --with his daughter, Clara Clemens--slandered Isabel in the newspapers, erasing her nearly seven years of devoted service to their family."--Page 4 of cover
Download or read book Mark and Livy written by Resa Willis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Olivia Langdon Clemens was not only the love of Mark Twain's life and the mother of his children, she was also his editor, muse, critic and trusted advisor. She read his letters and speeches. He relied on her judgment on his writing, and readily admitted that she not only edited his work, but also edited his public persona.Until now, little has been known about Livy's crucial place in Twain's life. In Resa Willis's affecting and fascinating biography, we meet a dignified, optimistic women who married young, raised three sons and a daughter, endured myriad health problems and money woes and who faithfully traipsed all over the world with Twain--Africa, Europe, Asia--while battling his moodiness and her frailty.Twain adored her. A hard-drinking dreamer with an insatiable wanderlust, he needed someone to tame him. It was Livy who encouraged him to finish his autobiography even through the last stages of her illness. When she died in 1904, Twain's zest for life and writing was gone. He died six years later. A triumph of the biographer's art, Mark and Livy presents the fullest picture yet of one of the most influential women in American letters.
Download or read book Mark Twain s Book for Bad Boys and Girls written by Mark Twain and published by M J F Books. This book was released on 2002-07 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first-ever compilation of Twain's wise and witty essays, sketches, and stories on the joys and rewards of misbehavior. With themes including "honesty is not always the best policy, ""the wicked are not always punished," and "virtue is often its only reward," this is a charming treasury that will warm the hearts of bad boys and girls (of any age)everywhere
Download or read book Personal Memoirs of U S Grant written by Ulysses Simpson Grant and published by New York, C. L. Webster & Company. This book was released on 1885 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with failing health and financial ruin, the Civil War's greatest general and former president wrote his personal memoirs to secure his family's future - and won himself a unique place in American letters. Devoted almost entirely to his life as a soldier, Grant's Memoirs traces the trajectory of his extraordinary career - from West Point cadet to general-in-chief of all Union armies. For their directness and clarity, his writings on war are without rival in American literature, and his autobiography deserves a place among the very best in the genre.
Download or read book Mark and Livy written by Resa Willis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Until now, little has been known about Livy's crucial place in Twain's life. In Resa Willis's biography, we meet a dignified, optimistic woman who not only married young and raised a family under the constraints of her poor health and his money problems, but also faithfully traipsed all over the world with Twain in a partnership that spanned four decades, Mark and Livy is a triumph of the biographer's art, and essential to a full understanding of America's foremost writer."--Jacket
Download or read book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written by Mark Twain and published by . This book was released on 2021-02-07 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (often shortened to Huck Finn) is a novel written by American humorist Mark Twain. It is commonly used and accounted as one of the first Great American Novels. It is also one of the first major American novels written using Local Color Regionalism, or vernacular, told in the first person by the eponymous Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, best friend of Tom Sawyer and hero of three other Mark Twain books.The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. By satirizing Southern antebellum society that was already a quarter-century in the past by the time of publication, the book is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. The drifting journey of Huck and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River on their raft may be one of the most enduring images of escape and freedom in all of American literature.
Download or read book Grant and Twain written by Mark Perry and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2005-05-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1884 Ulysses S. Grant heeded the advice of Mark Twain and finally agreed to write his memoirs. Little did Grant or Twain realize that this seemingly straightforward decision would profoundly alter not only both their lives but the course of American literature. Over the next fifteen months, as the two men became close friends and intimate collaborators, Grant raced against the spread of cancer to compose a triumphant account of his life and times—while Twain struggled to complete and publish his greatest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.In this deeply moving and meticulously researched book, veteran writer Mark Perry reconstructs the heady months when Grant and Twain inspired and cajoled each other to create two quintessentially American masterpieces. In a bold and colorful narrative, Perry recounts the early careers of these two giants, traces their quest for fame and elusive fortunes, and then follows the series of events that brought them together as friends. The reason Grant let Twain talk him into writing his memoirs was simple: He was bankrupt and needed the money. Twain promised Grant princely returns in exchange for the right to edit and publish the book—and though the writer’s own finances were tottering, he kept his word to the general and his family. Mortally ill and battling debts, magazine editors, and a constant crush of reporters, Grant fought bravely to get the story of his life and his Civil War victories down on paper. Twain, meanwhile, staked all his hopes, both financial and literary, on the tale of a ragged boy and a runaway slave that he had been unable to finish for decades. As Perry delves into the story of the men’s deepening friendship and mutual influence, he arrives at the startling discovery of the true model for the character of Huckleberry Finn. With a cast of fascinating characters, including General William T. Sherman, William Dean Howells, William Henry Vanderbilt, and Abraham Lincoln, Perry’s narrative takes in the whole sweep of a glittering, unscrupulous age. A story of friendship and history, inspiration and desperation, genius and ruin, Grant and Twain captures a pivotal moment in the lives of two towering Americans and the age they epitomized.
Download or read book Mrs Mark Twain written by Martin Naparsteck and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book-length biography of Olivia Langdon Clemens, Mark Twain's wife. Livy was an intelligent, well-educated woman of Victorian values and sensibilities who lived a charmed and tragic life. Raised in the wealthiest family in Elmira, New York, she married the man destined to become the best known American in the world. She befriended the literary elite of America and Europe, traveled the globe, dined with royalty. Yet her life was filled with tragedy. Her son was born prematurely and died at 19 months. Her oldest daughter died of spinal meningitis at 24. Her youngest daughter was an epileptic. Her husband's bad investments drove the family into bankruptcy. Her frail health kept her bedridden for years at a time. Yet through all this, she and her husband shared a family life filled with love and tenderness.
Download or read book How Nancy Jackson Married Kate Wilson and Other Tales of Rebellious Girls Daring Young Women written by Mark Twain and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of thirteen stories about unconventional girls and women.
Download or read book Mark Twain s Aquarium written by Samuel Langhorne Clemens and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What I lacked and what I needed," confessed Samuel Clemens in 1908, "was grandchildren." Near the end of his life, Clemens became the doting friend and correspondent of twelve schoolgirls ranging in age from ten to sixteen. For Clemens, "collecting" these surrogate granddaughters was a way of overcoming his loneliness, a respite from the pessimism, illness, and depression that dominated his later years. In Mark Twain's Aquarium, John Cooley brings together virtually every known communication exchanged between the writer and the girls he called his "angelfish." Cooley also includes a number of Clemens's notebook entries, autobiographical dictations, short manuscripts, and other relevant materials that further illuminate this fascinating story. Clemens relished the attention of these girls, orchestrating chaperoned visits to his homes and creating an elaborate set of rules and emblems for the Aquarium Club. He hung their portraits in his billiard room and invented games and plays for their amusement. For much of 1908, he was sending and receiving a letter a week from his angelfish. Cooley argues that Clemens saw cheerfulness and laughter as his only defenses against the despair of his late years. His enchantment with children, years before, had given birth to such characters as Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Huck Finn. In the frivolities of the Aquarium Club, it found its final expression. Cooley finds no evidence of impropriety in Clemens behavior with the girls. Perhaps his greatest crime, the editor suggests, was in idealizing them, in regarding them as precious collectibles. "He tried to trap them in the amber of endless adolescence," Cooley writes. "By pleading that they stay young and innocent, he was perhaps attempting to deny that, as they and the world continued to change, so must he."
Download or read book Channeling Mark Twain written by Carol Muske-Dukes and published by Random House. This book was released on 2007-07-03 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fresh out of graduate school, Holly Mattox is a young, newly married, and spirited poet who moves to New York City from Minnesota in the early 1970’s. Hoping to share her passion for words and social justice, Holly is also determined to contribute to the politically charged atmosphere around her. Her mission: to successfully teach a poetry workshop at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island, only minutes from Manhattan. Having listened to her mother recite verse by heart all her life, Holly has always been drawn to poetry. Yet until she stands before a class made up of prisoners and detainees–all troubled women charged with a variety of crimes–even Holly does not know the full power that language can possess. Words are the only weapon left to many of these outspoken women: the hooker known as Baby Ain’t (as in “Baby Ain’t Nobody Better!”); Gene/Jean, who is mid-sex change; drug mule Never Delgado; and Akilah Malik, a leader of the Black Freedom Front. One woman in particular will change Holly’s life forever: Polly Lyle Clement, an inmate awaiting transfer to a mental hospital upstate, one day announces that she is a descendant of Mark Twain and is capable of channeling his voice. And so begins Holly’s descent into the dark recesses of the criminal justice system, where in an attempt to understand and help her students she will lose her perspective on the nature of justice–and risk ruining everything stable in her life. As Holly begins an affair with a fellow poet–who claims to know her better than she knows herself–she finds herself adrift between two ends of the social and political spectrum, between two men and two identities. National Book Award finalist Carol Muske-Dukes has created an explosive, mesmerizing novel exploring the worlds of poetry, sex, and politics in the unforgettable New York City of the seventies. Written with her trademark captivating language and emotional intuition, Channeling Mark Twain is Muske-Dukes’s most powerful work to date.
Download or read book Mark Twain and Me written by Dorothy Quick and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A little girl's friendship with Mark Twain.
Download or read book Slammerkin written by Emma Donoghue and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2002 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mary Saunders' lust for linen, lace and a shiny red ribbon leads her to a life of prostitution.
Download or read book Hello Goodbye Hello written by Craig Brown and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of whimsical true encounters between famous and infamous individuals describes the unlikely meetings of Marilyn Monroe with Frank Lloyd Wright, Michael Jackson with Nancy Reagan, and Sigmund Freud with Gustav Mahler.
