Mark Twain1835-1910

• Twain was born “Samuel Langhorne Clemens.”

• When he was four his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River, where Twain spent most of his childhood.

Mark Twain’s birthplace in Florida, Missouri.

• Missouri was a slave state: his father owned one slave, his uncle owned many slaves.

• Father died when he was 11. Twain left school and, went to work at a printing press.

• At 18 goes to NYC to work at newspapers.

• 1857 - Returns to Missouri and goes to work as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River.

• 1861 - Civil War breaks out. Twain joins a unit of the Confederate Army, for two weeks. He says they spent their time running away from any danger!

On the steamboat the crew would measure the depth of the water to determine if it was deep enough for the boat to pass. If it was deep enough, the crew member would call out “Mark Twain!” Twain adopted the term as a pseudonym.

Our Civil War was a blot on our history, but not as great a blot as the buying and selling of Negro

souls. Mark Twain

• 1861 - moves to the Nevada Territory with his brother - silver mining.

• Writes for a Virginia City, Nevada newspaper and later a San Francisco paper.

• Travels to Hawaii for a newspaper and embarks on a lecture tour upon his return.

Twain (center) and two friends, 1871.

• 1867 - Travels to Europe and the Holy Land. Sends missives to a California paper.

• 1869 - Publishes his first book Innocents Abroad about his travels.

• 1870 - Marries Olivia Langdon.

• 1872 - Publishes Roughing It, a book about his travels West.

•He and his wife have 3 daughters. A son died of diphtheria at 19 months.

•Has a house built in Hartford, Connecticut, 1874.

• Writes -

1873 The Gilded Age

1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

1883 Life on the Mississippi

1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

• 1884 - Publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

• 1896 - While on a lecture tour in Europe his 24 year old daughter dies of meningitis.

• The Clemens never return to Hartford to live.

• Goes in and out of bankruptcy due to poor investments.

• 1904 - Wife dies.

• 1909 - Daughter dies of epileptic seizure.

• Twain said:

• 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.’

• Twain died the next year, 1910 during Halley’s Comet’s appearance.

Twain once said:

“Huck Finn is a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision, and conscience suffers defeat.”

“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Mark Twain

American Realism 1860-1890

• Attempts to depict life as it is experienced without miraculous events, larger than life characters, or supernatural intervention.

• Character is more important than action and plot; complex ethical choices are often the subject.

• Characters appear in their real complexity of temperament and motive.

• Diction is natural vernacular, not heightened or poetic; tone may be comic, satiric, or matter-of-fact.