FREE ESSAY ON MARK TWAIN

MARK TWAIN

MARK TWAIN a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Mark Twain, which is a pseudonym for Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was born in 1835, and died
in 1910. He was an american writer and humorist. Maybe one of the reasons Twain will be
remembered is because his writings contained morals and positive views. Because Twain's
writing is so descriptive, people look to his books for realistic interpretations of
places, for his memorable characters, and his ability to describe his hatred for
hypocrisy and oppression. HE believed he could write. Most authors relied on other people
and what they said, but because Twain was so solitary, he made himself so successful. 1
When he was younger, his family moved. When he was four years old, his family moved
Clemens (Twain) into a port city on the Mississippi River called Hannibal; however, his
birthplace was Florida, Missouri. This was stated in a newspaper I found in my uncles
office.Missouri was thier favorite place he ever lived because it was where he felt most
respected. In Hannibal, we learned that Twain was a very descriptive writer.He then
received a public school education because he was very successful. When his father died
in 1847, Clemens was apprenticed to two Hannibal printers and that was one of his
favorite occupations. In 1851 he began setting type for and contributing sketches to his
brother Orion's Hannibal Journal. While he worked as a printer, he lived in many cities
such as, Keokuk, Iowa; New York City; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and a few others. Later
Clemens was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, which pulled him away from the
publishing business, until the American Civil War brought an end to travel on the river.
2In 1861 Clemens served briefly as a volunteer soldier in the Confederate Calvary because
he always wanted to. Later that year he accompanied his brother to the newly created
Nevada Territory, where he tried his hand at silver mining. In 1862 he became a reporter
on the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, which brought him back to the writing he
loved, and in 1863 he began signing his articles with the name Mark Twain. He picked
'Twain' for his writing name because it reminded him of an old Mississippi River phrase
meaning two fathoms deep. In San Francisco, California in 1864, Twain moved and met
American writers Artemus Ward and Bret Harte, whoencouraged him in his work. In 1854
Twain reworked a tale that he had heard in the California gold fields, and within months
the author and the story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of CalaverasCounty, had become
national sensations.
Twain lectured in New York City in 1867 and in the same year he 
visited Europe and Palestine because he loved 'antique' places of sight seeing. He wrote
of these travels in The Innocents Abroad (1869),which is a book exaggerating those
aspects of European culture that impress American tourists. In 1870 he married Olivia
Langdon. When the new couple first married , they lived in Buffalo, New York. Then they
moved to Hartford, Connecticut. 3
Much of Twain's best work was written in the 1870s and 1880s in Hartford or during the
summers at Quarry Farm, near Elmira, New York. ''Roughing It'' (1872) which recounts his
early adventures as a miner and journalist was first. 4 In a story called The Adventures
of Tom Sawyer he was stated that Quarry Farm was Twain's favorite place he ever resided.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) which celebrates boyhood in a town on the Mississippi
River was his second novel. A Tramp Abroad (1880) which describes a walking trip through
the Black Forest of Germany and the Swiss Alps was an account of his travels abroad. The
Prince and the Pauper (1882),which is a children's book, focuses on switched identities
in Tudor England.  Life on the Mississippi (1883) which combines an autobiographical
account of his experiences as a river pilot with a visit to the Mississippi nearly two
decades after he left it was also written in account that derived from his travels. A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) which satirizes oppression in feudal
England was one of the last novels he wrote.5
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the sequel to Tom Sawyer, is considered
Twain's masterpiece.6 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was an adventure story, the
story of the title character known as Huck, a boy who flees his father by rafting down
the Mississippi River with a runaway slave, Jim. Because of the cruelty that men are
capable of , the pairs adventures show time and again the dangers of being alone in the
world. Another theme of the novel is that the conflict between Huck's feelings of
friendship with Jim, who is one of the few people he can trust, and his knowledge that he
is breaking the laws of the time by helping Jim escape.7 Huckleberry Finn,which is almost
entirely narrated from Huck's point of view, is noted for its authentic language and for
its deep commitment to freedom. Huck's adventures also provide the reader with a panorama
of American life along the Mississippi before the Civil War that today, in my opinion, is
hard to find in many books. Twain's skill in capturing the rhythms of that life help make
the book one of the masterpieces of American literature.8
In 1884 Twain formed the firm Charles L. Webster and Company to publish his and other
writers' works, and that notably Personal Memoirs (two volumes,1885-1886) by American
general and president Ulysses S. Grant. 9Because Twain wasn't very organized and
professional, a disastrous investment in an automatic typesetting machine led to the
firm's bankruptcy in 1894. A successful worldwide lecture tour and the book based on
those travels, Following the Equator(1897), paid off Twain's debts.10
Twain's work during the 1890s and the 1900s is marked by 
growing pessimism and bitterness, and that the result of his horrible 
business failure and, later, the deaths of his wife and two daughters. 11 Significant
works of this period are Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) that was very popular at that time, a
novel set in the South before the Civil War that criticizes racism by focusing on
mistaken racial identities, and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896), that was a
sentimental biography. Twain's other later writings include short stories, the best known
of which are The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1899) and The War Prayer (1905); that was
philosophical, social, and political essays; the manuscript of The Mysterious Stranger,
an uncompleted piece that was published posthumously in 1916; and autobiographical
dictations. 
Twain's work was inspired by the unconventional West, and the 
popularity of his work marked the end of the domination of American literature by New
England writers, because the people were ready for a change. He is justly renowned as a
humorist but was not always appreciated by the writers of his time as anything more than
that. Successive generations of writers, however, recognized the role that Twain played
in creating a truly American literature. 12 He portrayed uniquely American subjects in a
humorous and colloquial, yet poetic, language.  His success in creating this plain but
evocative language precipitated the end of American reverence for British and European
culture and for the more formal language associated with those traditions 13 His
adherence to American themes, settings, and language set him apart from many other
novelists of the day and had a powerful effect on such later American writers as Ernest
Hemingway and William Faulkner, which both of whom pointed to Twain as an inspiration for
their own writing. 14
In Twain's later years he wrote less, but he became a celebrity, frequently speaking out
on public issues. He also came to be known for the white linen suit he always wore when
making public appearances.15Twain received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University
in 1907. When he died he left an uncompleted autobiography, which was eventually edited
by his secretary, Albert Bigelow Paine, and published in 1924. In 1990 the first half of
a handwritten manuscript of Huckleberry Finn was discovered in Hollywood,California.
After a series of legal battles over ownership, the portion which included previously
unpublished material, was reunited with its second half, which had been housed at the
Buffalo and Erie County (New York) Public Library, in 1992. A revised edition of
Huckleberry Finn, that included the unpublished material, was released in 1996.
Bibliography
~Bibliography~
Birgham, Jane. Mark Twain. Writers for Children, New York: Charles Scribner's sons.
1988.
Twain, Mark. American Writers. 1979.
Twain, Mark. Tweintieth-Century Critism.
Clemens, Samuel. The Family Mark Twain. Dorset Press. 1988.
Samuel, Langhan Clemens. Dictionary of Literary Biographies. 1982.
~End Notes~
1. Twain, Mark. American Writers. 1979.322.
2. Samuel Langhorne Clemens. The Family Mark Twain. 1988. 243
3. Jane Birgham. Mark Twain. Writers for Children.1988.43
4. American Writers 67.
5. Samuel Langhorne Clemens 453.
6. Tweintieth-Century Critism 34
7. Birgham 54.
8. Birgham 56.
9. American Writers 211.
10. Tweintieth-Century Critism 278.
11. Samuel Langhorne Clemens 622.
12. Birgham 233.
13. American Writers 433.
14. Samuel Langhorne Clemens 344.
15. Birgham 231.