Transcript Slide 1

MARK TWAIN
A&E Biography notes
ABOUT HUCK FINN
• Huck Finn was, and still remains, a
controversial book
• NOT a “children’s book”—adult themes
and ideas
EARLY YEARS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Prankster, rebel, dreamer
The Lincoln of American literature
75 years
A man of humble origins
Despised wealth but always tried to acquire it
Defender of the underdog
“The first modern celebrity”
– Trademark white suit
• Embodied the best and the worst of America
• Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens
• Grew up in Hannibal, Missouri
• Father died when he was 12; quit school to become a
printer’s apprentice
• Traveled to New Orleans in 1857
• At age 22 began training as a riverboat pilot (a
“steamboatman”) on the Mississippi River
– Became a skilled steamboat pilot
– “The only unfettered and entirely independent being on the face
of the earth”
• The people (characters) he met on the river later
became models for his characters
• Outbreak of Civil War stopped commercial traffic on the
Mississippi
• Mark Twain served in the Army for a few weeks only
• Sam Clemens’s older brother got a job in the
new Nevada Territory, and Clemens tagged
along with him to start a new life out west
• Virginia City was a wild frontier town
• Took up mining, but was not successful
• Began storytelling and began his career as a
newspaper reporter
• Also began writing fiction (short stories)
• April 3, 1863 he first used his pen name MARK
TWAIN (had used others before)
MARK TWAIN-from his riverboat past—water depth
measurement – “Mark Twain (two fathoms deep—
safe water) (Maybe actually from the saloons?)
• “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County” first
successful short story published
• Left Virginia City (to avoid a duel?) and moved to San
Francisco
• Began a journalism career in SF
• Wrote passionately about the terrible treatment of
Chinese in SF at the time
• Afraid of police reprisals, he fled to Angel’s Camp, and
then took a voyage to ‘the Sandwich islands” (Hawaii)
• Wrote and took notes from this fantastic adventure
• FIRST BEGAN HIS CAREER AS A LECTURER,
STORYTELLER
– He performed in dozens of cities to great acclaim
– Built a reputation for himself
• Perfected his comic alter ego
• 1867 Twain moved east.
• Took a voyage to Europe, met Charles Langdon, brother
of his future wife, Olivia Langdon.
• Twain pursued Olivia (“Livy”) for two years before her
father would permit her to marry him.
• HE gave HER “zest for life.”
• SHE gave HIM “unconditional love” AND HER FAMILY
INTRODUCED HIM TO ABOLITIONIST IDEAS, which he
eventually adopted passionately
• INNOCENTS ABROAD first successful book (based on
his travels with naïve Americans in Europe and the
Middle East).
– Made fun of Americans who tried to “get cultured” through fast
travels in Europe, and also made fun of “European pretentions.”
• SUBSCRIPTION BOOK SALES (“mass audience”
literature—books meant for “the masses” as opposed to
targeting the elite)
• THE GUILDED AGE was a book that slammed the elite,
rich class in America
– Spoke for ordinary people
• Twains built a huge, fancy home in Hartford, Connecticut
• Became “wealthy” and lived the “wealthy” life, even
though he despised how the rich behaved
• “POPULISM”
• Twain loved all the new inventions of the time (1850s,
1860s)
• Aware that his name and his image could be marketed
– Did celebrity endorsements of products (sewing machines,
cigars, medicine elixers, etc.)
• Twain’s publishing house “saved” former president U.S.
Grant from poverty and economic ruin by publishing the
president’s memoirs and making his family $$$
• 1884 PUBLICATION OF THE ADVENTURES OF
HUCKLEBERRY FINN
• A “vulgar, uneducated” boy tells his own story in his own
voice – A FIRST IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
• HUCK’S TRANSFORMATION TO ANTI-SLAVERY
MIRRORED TWAIN’S OWN
• TWAIN AND OLIVIA RAISED THREE DAUGHTERS
• Twain was particularly close to his youngest daughter
“Susie.”
• Twain’s favorite place was QUARRY FARM (in Olivia’s
hometown of Elmira, NY)
– Twain had his own writing studio there and he did his best writing
there
• 1880s proved financially disastrous for Twains
– Forced to declare bankruptcy from a bad investments, but
publicly declared he’s pay back all his debts
• 1884 (60 years old and not in great health) around-theworld lecture tour to raise money and pay off his debts
• Daughter Susie (left with Olivia’s family in Elmira) died of
meningitis while they are gone
• Olivia returned to New York to bury her; never returned
to the Clemens home in Hartford, CT
• Even though Twain was perhaps the most famous man
in the world, his later years were marred by personal
tragedies.
• 1904 Olivia died.
• Showered with tributes in his later years, including an
honorary degree from Oxford.
• Mark Twain, the public institution and figure, (white suits,
gregarious) makes a delightful spectacle of himself, but
Sam Clemens, the man, was a lonely man.
• Died in 1910
– “I came in with Haley’s Comet, and I hope to go out with it, as
well.”
– -Haley’s Comet appeared in both the year he was born and the
year he died