Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835,
in Florida, Missouri; his family moved to the port town of Hannibal
four years later. His father, an unsuccessful farmer, died when
Twain was eleven. Soon afterward the boy began working as an
apprentice printer, and by age sixteen he was writing newspaper
sketches. He left Hannibal at eighteen to work as an itinerant
printer in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. From
1857 to 1861 he worked on Mississippi steamboats, advancing from
cub pilot to licensed pilot.
After river shipping was interrupted by the Civil War, Twain headed
west with his brother Orion, who had been appointed secretary to
the Nevada Territory. Settling in Carson City, he tried his luck at
prospecting and wrote humorous pieces for a range of newspapers.
Around this time he first began using the pseudonym Mark Twain,
derived from a riverboat term. Relocating to San Francisco, he
became a regular newspaper correspondent and a contributor to the
literary magazine the Golden Era. He made a five-month journey to
Hawaii in 1866 and the following year traveled to Europe to report
on the first organized tourist cruise. The Celebrated Jumping Frog
of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867) consolidated his
growing reputation as humorist and lecturer.
After his marriage to Livy Langdon, Twain settled first in Buffalo,
New York, and then for two decades in Hartfort, Connecticut. His
European sketches were expanded into The Innocents Abroad (1869),
followed by Roughing It (1872), an account of his Western
adventures; both were enormously successful. Twain's literary
triumphs were offset by often ill-advised business dealings (he
sank thousands of dollars, for instance, in a failed attempt to
develop a new kind of typesetting machine, and thousands more into
his own ultimately unsuccessful publishing house) and unrestrained
spending that left him in frequent financial difficulty, a pattern
that was to persist throughout his life.
Following The Gilded Age (1873), written in collaboration with
Charles Dudley Warner, Twain began a literary exploration of his
childhood memories of the Mississippi, resulting in a trio of
masterpieces--The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the
Mississippi (1883), and finally The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
(1885), on which he had been working for nearly a decade. Another
vein, of historical romance, found expression in The Prince and the
Pauper (1882), the satirical A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court (1889), and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896),
while he continued to draw on his travel experiences in A Tramp
Abroad (1880) and Following the Equator (1897). His close
associates in these years included William Dean Howells, Bret
Harte, and George Washington Cable, as well as the dying Ulysses S.
Grant, whom Twain encouraged to complete his memoirs, published by
Twain's publishing company in 1885.
For most of the 1890s Twain lived in Europe, as his life took a
darker turn with the death of his daughter Susy in 1896 and the
worsening illness of his daughter Jean. The tone of Twain's writing
also turned progressively more bitter. The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead
Wilson (1894), a detective story hinging on the consequences of
slavery, was followed by powerful anti-imperialist and anticolonial
statements such as 'To the Person Sitting in Darkness' (1901), 'The
War Prayer' (1905), and 'King Leopold's Soliloquy' (1905), and by
the pessimistic sketches collected in the privately published What
Is Man? (1906). The unfinished novel The Mysterious Stranger was
perhaps the most uncompromisingly dark of all Twain's later works.
In his last years, his financial troubles finally resolved, Twain
settled near Redding, Connecticut, and died in his mansion,
Stormfield, on April 21, 1910.
"Twain is the funniest literary American writer. . . . [I]t must
have been a great pleasure to be him."
--George Saunders
Gr 5 Up-While Mark Twain is most often identified with his childhood home on the Mississippi, he wrote many of his enduring classics during the years he lived in Hartford, Connecticut. He had come a long way from Hannibal when he focused his irreverent humor on medieval tales, and wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The hit on the head that sent protagonist Hank Morgan back through 13 centuries did not affect his natural resourcefulness. Using his knowledge of an upcoming eclipse, Hank escapes a death sentence, and secures an important position at court. Gradually, he introduces 19th century technology so the clever Morgan soon has an easy life. That does not stop him from making disparaging, tongue-in-cheek remarks about the inequalities and imperfections of life in Camelot. Twain weaves many of the well-known Arthurian characters into his story, and he includes a pitched battle between Morgan's men and the nobility. Kenneth Jay's narration is a mix of good-natured bonhomie for Hank and more formal diction for the arcane Olde English speakers. Appropriate music is used throughout to indicate story breaks and add authenticity to scenes. This good quality recording is enhanced by useful liner notes and an attractive case. Younger listeners may need explanations of less familiar words, and some knowledge of the Knights of the Round Table will be helpful. Libraries completing an audiobook collection of Twain titles will enjoy this nice, but not necessary, abridgement.-Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library, Rocky Hill, CT Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
"Twain is the funniest literary American writer. . . . [I]t must
have been a great pleasure to be him."
--George Saunders
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