Growing Up
Perhaps it was a sign of the infant's rise to literary fame. As Halley's comet reached its perihelion — its closest point to the sun — Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in the sleepy, little town of Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835. No one realized, of course, that the fifth child of John and Jane Clemens would eventually become more famous than the celebrated comet and recognized as one of the most original and important authors in American and world literature. His legacy extends to that of America's greatest humorist, and his abundance of works reflects his early years along the country's great river.
Sam's father, John Marshall Clemens, a highly intelligent man, was a mildly successful lawyer, a justice of the peace, and a stern disciplinarian of his children. Sam's mother, Jane, a Southern belle in her youth, had a natural sense of humor and was greatly affectionate, especially to animals and people down on their luck. The combination of parental personalities would later be found in several of Mark Twain's characters, and Huckleberry Finn's concern for the less fortunate is reminiscent of Jane Clemen's kindness and compassion.
When Sam reached the age of four, the family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a small town of about a thousand people. Situated on the West bank of the Mississippi River, roughly eighty miles north of St. Louis, Hannibal was dusty, quiet, and in walking distance of large forests. The surrounding land and waterways provided young Sam countless images for his future writings. The Mississippi River shoreline was constantly occupied with rafts, skiffs, and large steamboats moving up and down the main artery between the North and the South. The tanyard, where Pap Finn would later sleep among the hogs, was found nearby, and downstream was a small cave where Indian Joe would later trap Tom and Becky in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Hannibal would eventually become "St. Petersburg" in Tom Sawyer and the same town was used for the initial setting in Huck Finn.
With its rustic landscape, bustling river traffic, and scores of eager pioneers passing through on their way to fortune in the West, Hannibal introduced Sam to an America that was quickly moving out of the frontier age. More important, the town introduced the young boy to two substantial aspects of American life: the concept of slavery and the reality of death. Although Missouri was a slave state, Hannibal's northern position resulted in a part slave/part free community. At that time, Sam did not trouble himself with the distinction. His recollections of childhood included his attitude toward slavery, and he later acknowledged that he was unaware of its inhumanity: "I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware that there was anything wrong about it."
Early Career
The death of the father in 1847 placed the Clemens family in financial difficulty, and Sam had to forego the schooling he had begun and become an apprentice printer to the publisher of the local Missouri Courier. Shortly thereafter, Sam left to work as an apprentice for his brother, Orion. The brothers returned to Hannibal after two years, and Orion took control as proprietor of the Journal. In addition to his apprentice duties, Sam contributed small literary pieces to the Journal, a humble beginning to his future writing career. The success of the brothers was short-lived, however, and after Orion left Hannibal, Sam found work in St. Louis, then New York, and Philadelphia. For a brief period of time, he joined his brother Orion in Keokuk, Iowa, where he again worked as a printer.
In 1856, hoping to find the success that had eluded his father and Orion, Sam conceived a wild scheme of making a fortune in South America. The drive to become rich quickly through promising deals would follow Sam throughout his life. On a riverboat to New Orleans, however, Sam met a riverboat pilot who promised to teach him the trade for five hundred dollars.
Because of his fascination with the river and the grand boats that traveled it, Sam seized the opportunity to become a pilot of the muddy waters. In 1857, he became a cub pilot on the Paul Jones steamboat, eventually receiving his pilot's license in 1859. After completing his training, he was a riverboat pilot for four years, during which time he became familiar with the towns along the Mississippi River and their various inhabitants.
When the American Civil War broke out in April of 1861, the Mississippi River was effectively closed by both Union and Confederate forces, and Sam was forced to abandon his pilot career. Sam, whose allegiance tended to be Southern due to his heritage, joined the Confederate militia, but after three short weeks, he deserted and headed West. In his Autobiography, Twain remarked that "I resigned after two weeks service in the field, explaining that I was 'incapacitated by fatigue' through persistent retreating." Orion convinced him to join an expedition to the Nevada Territory, a trip that became the subject matter of a later work, Roughing It (1872).
Writing Career
While in the Nevada Territory, Sam resumed writing humorous sketches and travel letters and began using the pseudonym, Mark Twain, a term for water that is only two fathoms — twelve feet — deep. Twain continued to sign his more serious pieces as "S. L. Clemens," but the farces, hoaxes, and satires that were to make him famous were now authored by "Mark Twain." With the realization that he had an audience for his brand of bawdy humor, Twain began to travel extensively and write humorous travel letters for the San Francisco Alta California. The Alta California sponsored his steamship journey from New York to the Mediterranean, and the resulting travel letters increased his audience and admirers; Twain's literary rise was under way.
Between 1864 and 1870, Twain contributed articles and travel letters to various newspapers and published Innocents Abroad (1869). After a long courtship, he married Olivia Langdon, daughter of Jervis Langdon, in 1870. Olivia proved to be a tempering influence on the often-moody Twain, and her family's abolitionist views on slavery influenced Twain and his writings. As with Olivia's father, Jervis, Twain eventually became friends with Frederick Douglass and supported the antislavery movement.
Because of the acclaim of Innocents Abroad, Twain gave up his career as a journalist-reporter and began concentrating on short stories and books. Using the method of parlaying his short story success into collections, Twain's fame as a writer was immediate, and Innocents Abroad became a bestseller. The satire Twain used to expose the so-called sophistication of the Old World, in contrast to the old-fashioned American common sense, is similar to that found some ten years later in A Tramp Abroad (1880), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), when Hank Morgan confronts nobility and knighthood.
But it was the Mississippi River and the values of the people living along its shores that have made Twain one of America's best and favorite storytellers. The humor that he found among the small one-horse towns, along with the culture of the Mississippi, has continued to fascinate readers and to embody an almost mythic sense of what it meant to be a young American in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
In 1876, Twain captured these elements in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Despite its contemporary reception, Tom Sawyer's publication was overshadowed by the deaths of George Custer and his calvary at Little Big Horn. But the book's popularity would grow throughout Twain's lifetime, and by the time of his death, it was his best-selling novel. Twain's most controversial work, however, was to come nine years later. In 1885, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published among much publicity and fanfare. Huck Finn ensured Twain's place among the literary giants, and the work would prove to be Twain's most studied and critically acclaimed novel.
Later Years
After Twain turned fifty, his fortunes reversed themselves. His health began to fail, and in 1894, he was forced to declare bankruptcy due to his investment in a failed automatic typesetter, a publishing company that drained more of his money than it earned him. His failures with moneymaking ventures extended to his family, and he suffered through the illnesses and deaths of those whom he loved. His wife, Olivia, struggled with her health and soon became a semi-invalid; one of his daughters developed epilepsy; and his oldest daughter died of meningitis. Twain's comment that "the secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow" became painfully realized, and by the end of the nineteenth century, Twain's writings reflected his dark view of life.
Overall, the 1890s were Twain's blackest decade. Twain and his family lived throughout Europe in hopes that the weather would improve the health of all the family members, but they sorely missed their home in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Langdon house at Quarry Farm in Elmira, New York. In 1894, Twain published Pudd'nhead Wilson, in which he confronted the slave-holding South and the question of nature versus nurture. Following a lecture trip around the world to raise money to repay his many creditors, he brought out a series of mostly unremarkable books, including Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, Tom Sawyer Abroad, and Tom Sawyer, Detective, all published in 1896.
In 1900, Twain's short story "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" was printed and proved to be one of his bleakest works. In it, Twain argued that human beings have no choice in what they do, no matter how much they think they are free to choose; rather, decisions are based selfishly on what will best help the individual. Twain's only darker view of humanity, published posthumously, was the fragmented The Mysterious Stranger, in which he condemned the universe and mocked the pitiful relations to one another and God.
On April 19, 1910, some 75 years after its last appearance, Halley's comet again reached its perihelion. Two days later, American's greatest humorist died at sunset at Stormfield, Twain's home near Redding, Connecticut. Olivia had died almost six years earlier, and Twain — "worn out in body and spirit," according to one critic — greatly missed his wife's company.
Mark Twain's Body of Work
The body of work that Twain left behind is immense and varied — poetry, sketches, journalistic pieces, political essays, novels, and short stories — all a testament to the diverse talent and energy that used the folklore of frontier America to create authentic masterpieces of enduring value. Many of his novels, especially those written earlier in his career, continue to be reprinted, and none rivals the overwhelming success of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which continues to be one of the most read, discussed, and taught novels in American culture. In one of Twain's letters to William Dean Howells, Twain captured his own view of his life and his works: "Ah, well, I am a great & sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, & all His works must be contemplated with respect."
Following is a publication history of Twain's novels and important works:
1865 "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog"
1867 The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches with the Burlesque Autobiography and First Romance
1868 "The Man Who Put up at Gadsby's"
"The Facts Concerning the Recent Resignation"
1869 The Innocents Abroad, or The new Pilgrims' Progress; Being some Account of the Steamship Quaker City's Pleasure Excursion to Europe
"A Day at Niagra"
1870 "A Medieval Romance"
"A Curious Dream"
"A Ghost Story"
1871 Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography
Roughing It
1873 The Gilded Age
1874 The Choice Humorous Works of Mark Twain
1875 "Old Times on the Mississippi" (serial)
Sketches, New and Old
"The Curious Republic of Gondour"
1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
begins Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
1877 A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime
1878 Punch, Brothers Punch! and Other Sketches
1880 A Tramp Abroad
1881 The Prince and the Pauper
1882 The Stolen White Elephant
1883 Life on the Mississippi (Chapter 3, the "Raft Chapter" was originally in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The character, Jim, is introduced in this chapter.)
finishes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
1884 Extracts of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are published in Century Magazine
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade) (London, Canada)
1885 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade) (New York)
1888 Mark Twain's Library of Humor
1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
1892 Merry Tales
The American Claimant
1893 The L1,000,000 Bank-Note and Other Stories
1894 Tom Sawyer Abroad
Pudd'nhead Wilson
1895 "How to Tell a Story"
1896 Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
Tom Sawyer Abroad/Tom Sawyer, Detective and Other Stories
1897 How to Tell a Story and Other Essays
Following the Equator
"The Chronicle of Young Satan"
"The Mysterious Stranger"
1900 The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Essays
English as She is Taught
1902 A Double-Barrelled Detective Story
1903 My Debut as a Literary Person with Others Essays and Stories
1904 A Dog's Tale
1905 King Leopold's Soliloquy
1906 The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories
What is Man?
1907 Christian Science
A Horse's Tale
1909 Is Shakespeare Dead
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
1910 "The Turning Point in My Life"
