Download or read book Mr Clemens and Mark Twain written by Justin Kaplan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark Twain, the American comic genius who portrayed, named, and in part exemplified America’s “Gilded Age,” comes alive in Justin Kaplan’s extraordinary biography. With brilliant immediacy, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain brings to life a towering literary figure whose dual persona symbolized the emerging American conflict between down-to-earth morality and freewheeling ambition. As Mark Twain, he was the Mississippi riverboat pilot, the satirist with a fiery hatred of pretension, and the author of such classics as Tom Sawyer andHuckleberry Finn. As Mr. Clemens, he was the star who married an heiress, built a palatial estate, threw away fortunes on harebrained financial schemes, and lived the extravagant life that Mark Twain despised. Kaplan effectively portrays the triumphant-tragic man whose achievements and failures, laughter and anger, reflect a crucial generation in our past as well as his own dark, divided, and remarkably contemporary spirit. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain brilliantly conveys this towering literary figure who was himself a symbol of the peculiarly American conflict between moral scrutiny and the drive to succeed. Mr. Clemens lived the Gilded Life that Mark Twain despised. The merging and fragmenting of these and other identities, as the biography unfolds, results in a magnificent projection of the whole man; the great comic spirit; and the exuberant, tragic human being, who, his friend William Dean Howells said, was “sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.”
Download or read book Mark Twain And The South written by Arthur G. Pettit and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The South was many things to Mark Twain: boyhood home, testing ground for manhood, and the principal source of creative inspiration. Although he left the South while a young man, seldom to return, it remained for him always a haunting presence, alternately loved and loathed. Mark Twain and the South was the first book on this major yet largely ignored aspect of the private life of Samuel Clemens and one of the major themes in his writing from 1863 until his death. Arthur G. Pettit clearly demonstrates that Mark Twain's feelings on race and region moved in an intelligible direction from the white Southern point of view he was exposed to in his youth to self-censorship, disillusionment, and, ultimately, a deeply pessimistic and sardonic outlook in which the dream of racial brotherhood was forever dead. Approaching his subject as a historian with a deep appreciation for literature, he bases his study on a wide variety of Mark Twain's published and unpublished works, including his notebooks, scrapbooks, and letters. An interesting feature of this illuminating work is an examination of Clemens's relations with the only two black men he knew well in his adult years.
Download or read book Inventing Mark Twain written by Andrew Jay Hoffman and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative, definitive biography explores the revealing and resonant contradictions between the true character of Samuel Clemens and his self-created alter ego, Mark Twain. Richly detailed and filled with new information from primary sources, Inventing Mark Twain traces an extraordinary life that led from Mississippi steamboats to the California goldfields to cultural immortality as America's national philosopher.
Download or read book Mr Clemens Mark Twain written by Justin Kaplan and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although this biography of Mark Twain begins when Twain is 31... the book is a full account of Twain, his life and his work related both to his early years and to the 'Gilded Age' of his mature life.
Download or read book Mr Clemens and Mark Twain written by Justin Kaplan and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain written by Forrest G. Robinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-05-26 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain offers new and thought provoking essays on an author of enduring pre-eminence in the American canon. The book is a collaborative project, assembled by scholars who have played crucial roles in the recent explosion of Twain criticism. Accessible enough to interest both experienced specialists and students new to Twain criticism, the essays examine Twain from a wide variety of critical perspectives, and include timely reflections by major critics on the hotly debated dynamics of race and slavery perceptible throughout his writing. The volume includes a chronology of Twain's life and a list of suggestions for further reading, to provide the students or general reader with sources for background as well as additional information.
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 Mark Twain written by Ron Powers and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 1176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twain's story is epic, comic and tragic. To retrace it all in illuminating detail, Powers draws on the tens of thousands of Twain's letters and on his astonishing journal entries - many of which are quoted here for the first time. Twain left Missouri for a life on the Mississippi during the golden age of steamboats, enjoyed an uproariously drunken newspaper career in the Nevada of the Wild West, and witnessed and joined the extremes of wealth and poverty of New York City and of the Gilded Age. Through it all he observed, borrowed, stole and combined the characters he met into the voice of America's greatest literature, attracting throngs of fans wherever his undying lust for wandering took him. From Twain's wicked satire to his relationships with the likes of Ulysses Grant, this is a brilliantly written story that astounds, amuses and edifies as only a great life can.
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 Twain and the Colonel written by Philip James McFarland and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a narrative history of the United States from 1890 to 1910, exploring such major themes as nationalism, racism, industrialization, and imperialism as reflected in the actions and writings of the era's two most famous figures.
Download or read book Bambino and Mr Twain written by P. I. Maltbie and published by Charlesbridge. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grieving the death of his wife, Mark Twain shuts himself up in his Fifth Avenue house and abandons his writing. Only his daughter's cantankerous cat, Bambino, seems to understand Twain and his moods. When the feisty cat disappears, Twain is determined to find him. Full color.
Download or read book A Family Sketch and Other Private Writings written by Mark Twain and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-11-07 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book publishes, for the first time in full, the two most revealing of Mark Twain’s private writings. Here he turns his mind to the daily life he shared with his wife Livy, their three daughters, a great many servants, and an imposing array of pets. These first-hand accounts display this gifted and loving family in the period of its flourishing. Mark Twain began to write "A Family Sketch" in response to the early death of his eldest daughter, Susy, but the manuscript grew under his hands to become an exuberant account of the entire household. His record of the childrens’ sayings—"Small Foolishnesses"—is next, followed by the related manuscript "At the Farm." Also included are selections from Livy’s 1885 diary and an authoritative edition of Susy’s biography of her father, written when she was a teenager. Newly edited from the original manuscripts, this anthology is a unique record of a fascinating family.
Download or read book Mark Twain and His World written by Justin Kaplan and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark Twain holds a unique position, not just in the literature world but in the ethos of nineteenth century America.
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 The Adventures of Mark Twain by Huckleberry Finn written by Robert Burleigh and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-10-21 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone knows the story of the raft on the Mississippi and that ol' whitewashed fence, but now it’s time for youngins everywhere to get right acquainted with the man behind the pen. Mr. Mark Twain! An interesting character, he was...even if he did sometimes get all gussied up in linen suits and even if he did make it rich and live in a house with so many tiers and gazebos that it looked like a weddin’ cake. All that’s a little too proper and hog tied for our narrator, Huckleberry Finn, but no one is more right for the job of telling this picture book biography than Huck himself. (We’re so glad he would oblige.) And, he’ll tell you one thing—that Mr. Twain was a piece a work! Famous for his sense of humor and saying exactly what’s on his mind, a real satirist he was—perhaps America’s greatest. Ever. True to Huck’s voice, this picture book biography is a river boat ride into the life of a real American treasure.
Download or read book Mark Twain s Speeches written by Mark Twain and published by Binker North. This book was released on 1910 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These Mark Twain speeches will address themselves to the minds and hearts of those who read them, but not with the effect they had with those who heard them; Clemens himself would have said, not with half the effect. I have noted elsewhere how he always held that the actor doubled the value of the author's words; and he was a great actor as well as a great author. In the words of author William Dean Howells: These speeches will address themselves to the minds and hearts of those who read them, but not with the effect they had with those who heard them; Clemens himself would have said, not with half the effect. I have noted elsewhere how he always held that the actor doubled the value of the author's words; and he was a great actor as well as a great author. He was a most consummate actor, with this difference from other actors, that he was the first to know the thoughts and invent the fancies to which his voice and action gave the color of life. Representation is the art of other actors; his art was creative as well as representative; it was nothing at second hand. I never heard Clemens speak when I thought he quite failed; some burst or spurt redeemed him when he seemed flagging short of the goal, and, whoever else was in the running, he came in ahead. His near-failures were the error of a rare trust to the spontaneity in which other speakers confide, or are believed to confide, when they are on their feet. He knew that from the beginning of oratory the orator's spontaneity was for the silence and solitude of the closet where he mused his words to an imagined audience; that this was the use of orators from Demosthenes and Cicero up and down. He studied every word and syllable, and memorized them by a system of mnemonics peculiar to himself, consisting of an arbitrary arrangement of things on a table--knives, forks, salt-cellars; inkstands, pens, boxes, or whatever was at hand--which stood for points and clauses and climaxes, and were at once indelible diction and constant suggestion. He studied every tone and every gesture, and he forecast the result with the real audience from its result with that imagined audience. Therefore, it was beautiful to see him and to hear him; he rejoiced in the pleasure he gave and the blows of surprise which he dea I have been talking of his method and manner; the matter the reader has here before him; and it is good matter, glad, honest, kind, just. W. D. HOWELLS.
Download or read book Dear Mark Twain written by Mark Twain and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-04-21 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects two hundred letters from readers of Mark Twain to the author himself, offering a glimpse into the lives and sensibilites of nineteenth-century children, preachers, con artists, inmates, and other fans of the author's work.
