DELIGHTFUL SATURDAYS WITH MY FAVORITE AUTHORS AND POETS (24)

MARK TWAIN

( Image and information : Wikipedia)

Mark Twain is one of my favorite authors. I loved reading his books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He was born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835 at Florida, Missouri, U.S. His pen names were Mark Twain, Josh, and Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass.

His parents were Jane (née Lampton; 1803–1890), a native of Kentucky, and John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847), a native of Virginia. They got married in 1823 and Samuel ( Mark Twain) was the sixth child of their seven children. Only three of his siblings, Orion (1825–1897), Pamela (1827–1904), and Henry (1838–1858) survived their childhood.

When he was four, Twain’s family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. After the death of his father due to pneumonia in 1847, Twain gave up his studies after fifth grade to join as an apprentice for a printer. He went on to become a typesetter, contributing articles and humorous sketches to the Hannibal Journal, his brother, Orion’s newspaper in 1851. He also worked as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River before joining his brother Orion in Nevada. He turned towards journalism with the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise.

He published his humorous story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” in 1865, based on a story that he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time as a miner. It attracted international attention and even got translated into French.

Mark Twain earned a lot of money with his writings and lectures but unfortunately lost his wealth due to wrong investments. He filed for bankruptcy but Henry Huttleston Rogers helped him to overcome his financial problems. Mark Twain paid off his creditors in full. He married Olivia Langdon in 1870 who died in 1904. They had four children.

Mark Twain received an honorary Doctorate of Letters (D.Litt.) by the University of Oxford in 1907. His quote before his death was :

“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: “Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together”.

His prediction turned out to be true as he passed away due to a heart attack a day after the comet passed closest to the earth.

Twain’s legacy still lives as he continues to be immortal, living in our hearts, after his death on April 21, 1910 (aged 74) at Stormfield House, Redding, Connecticut, U.S. Hats off to one of the legendary creative genius whose sense of humor was par excellence. I thank him for creating two of the most adorable characters, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

His popular works :

Novels

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873)

The Prince and the Pauper (1881)

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889)

The American Claimant (1892)

Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896)

A Horse’s Tale (1907)

The Mysterious Stranger (1916, posthumous)

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn series:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)

Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896)

“Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians” (c. 1884, 9 chapters, unfinished)

“Huck Finn” (c. 1897, fragment)

“Schoolhouse Hill” (in The Mysterious Stranger) (c. 1898, 6 chapters, unfinished)

“Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy” (c. 1899, 10 chapters, unfinished)

“Tom Sawyer’s Gang Plans a Naval Battle” (c. 1900, fragment)

Adam and Eve

“Extracts from Adam’s Diary”, illustrated by Frederick Strothmann (1904)

“Eve’s Diary”, illustrated by Lester Ralph (1906)

The Private Life of Adam and Eve: Being Extracts from Their Diaries, Translated from the Original Mss.” (Harper, 1931), LCCN 31-27192 – posthumous issue of the 1904 and 1906 works bound as one, as Twain had requested in a recently discovered letter.

Short Stories :

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1867)

“General Washington’s Negro Body-Servant” (1868)[4]

“Cannibalism in the Cars” (1868)”

A Medevial Romance” [1868] (unfinished)

“My Late Senatorial Secretaryship” (1868)

Mark Twain vs Blondin [1869 satire letter]]”

A Ghost Story” (1870)]: 176–180 ”

A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It” (1874)[8]: 70–73

 ”Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls” (1875)[8]: 77–83 ”

The Story Of The Bad Little Boy” (1875)

“The Story Of The Good Little Boy” (1875)”

A Literary Nightmare” (1876)”

A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage” (1876)

“The Canvasser’s Tale” (1876)”

The Invalid’s Story” (1877)[8]: 135–? ”

The Great Revolution in Pitcairn” (1879)[9]”

1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors” (1880)

“The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm” (1882)”

The Stolen White Elephant” (1882)”

Luck” (1891)”

Those Extraordinary Twins” (1892)

“Is He Living Or Is He Dead?” (1893)”

The Esquimau Maiden’s Romance” (1893)

“The Million Pound Bank Note” (1893)]: 226–238 ”

The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” (1900)”

A Double Barrelled Detective Story” (1902)

“A Dog’s Tale” (1904)

“The War Prayer” (1905)

“Hunting the Deceitful Turkey” (1906)”

A Fable” (1909)”

Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” (1909)”

My Platonic Sweetheart” (1912, posthumous)”

The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine”[ (2017, posthumous)

Collections :

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867), short story collection

Mark Twain’s (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance (1871), short story collection

Sketches New and Old (1875), short story collection

A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime (1877), short story collection

Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches (1878), short story collection

Mark Twain’s Library of Humor (1888), short story collection

Merry Tales (1892), short story collection

The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories (1893), short story collection

The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906), short story collection

The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches (1919, posthumous), short story collection

The Washoe Giant in San Francisco (1938, posthumous), short story collection

Mark Twain’s Fables of Man (1972, posthumous),^[11] short story collection
Essay collections

Memoranda (1870–1871), essay collection from Galaxy

How to Tell a Story and other Essays (1897)

Europe and Elsewhere (1923, posthumous), edited by Albert Bigelow Paine

Letters from the Earth (1962, posthumous)

A Pen Warmed Up In Hell (1972, posthumous)^[12]

The Bible According to Mark Twain (1996, posthumous)^[13]

Essays :

“Advice to Little Girls” (1865)”

On the Decay of the Art of Lying” (1880)”

The Awful German Language” (1880)”

Advice to Youth” (1882)”

Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” (1895)”

English As She Is Taught” (1897)”

Concerning the Jews” (1898)”

My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It” (1899)[14]”

A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth” (1900)”

To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901)

“To My Missionary Critics” (1901)

“Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany” (1901)”

What Is Man?” (1906)”

Christian Science” (1907)”

Queen Victoria’s Jubilee” (1910)”

The United States of Lyncherdom” (1923, posthumous)

Non fiction:

The Innocents Abroad (1869), travel

Roughing It (1872), travel

Old Times on the Mississippi (1876), travel

Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion (1877), travel

A Tramp Abroad (1880), travel

Life on the Mississippi (1883), travel

Following the Equator (sometimes titled “More Tramps Abroad”) (1897), travel

Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909)

Moments with Mark Twain (1920, posthumous)

Mark Twain’s Notebook (1935, posthumous)

Letters from Hawaii (letters written in 1866, published as a book in 1947)

Autobiography and letters:

Mark Twain’s Autobiography

Chapters from My Autobiography published by North American Review (1906–1907)[15]

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Albert Bigelow Paine (1924)

Posthumous edition named Mark Twain in Eruption compiled and edited by Bernard DeVoto (1940)

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Charles Neider

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and the Mark Twain Project: Volume 1 (2010)

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Robert Hirst and the Mark Twain Project: Volume 2 (2013)

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and the Mark Twain Project: Volume 3 (2015)

Mark Twain’s Letters, 1853–1880 (2010, posthumous)”

Territorial Enterprise letters” being compiled for release in 2017

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