Mark twain in Literary Criticism Books

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Hank Morgan, a nineteenth-century American who is accidentally returned to sixth-century England, is a powerful analysis of such issues as monarchy versus democracy and free will versus determinism, but it is also one of Twain's finest comic novels, still fresh and funny after more than 100 years.

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Behind the humor of these pieces, readers will see Twain's serious thoughts on the relationship between God and Man, biblical inconsistencies, Darwinism, science, and the impact of technology on religious beliefs. "A fascinating panoply of wit, satire, farce, fantasy, lyricism, heresy, the sardonic, and the controversial".--Patricia Hassler, Booklist.

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In this eccentric etiquette guide, aphorisms, suggestions, and cautionary tales culled from Mark Twain's personal letters, speeches, and novels are dispensed on topics such as dress, health, food, childrearing, and safety.

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This low-priced volume gathers together hundreds of Twain's most memorable quips and comments on life, love, history, culture, travel, and sundry topics that occupied his thoughts over 50 years of writing and lecturing.

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Twain, the riverboat pilot and renowned author, discusses his experiences on the Mississippi River while including tall tales and character sketches with his narrative.

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The field of Mark Twain biography has been dominated by men, and Samuel Clemens himself - riverboat pilot, Western correspondent, silver prospector, world traveler - has been traditionally portrayed as a man's man. The publication of Laura E. Skandera-Trombley's Mark Twain in the Company of Women, however, marks a significant departure from conventional scholarship. Skandera-Trombley, the first woman to write a scholarly biography of Mark Twain, contends that Clemens intentionally surrounded himself with women, and that his capacity to produce extended fictions had almost as much to do with the environment shaped by his female family as with the talent and genius of the writer himself. Women helped Clemens to define his boundaries, both personal and literary. Women shaped his life, edited his books, and provided models for his fictional characters. Clemens read and corresponded with female authors, and often actively promoted their careers. Skandera-Trombley seeks to combine a biographical study of Clemens's life with his beloved wife, Olivia (Livy) Langdon, and their three daughters, Susy, Clara, and Jean, with new readings of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. Several crucial areas are investigated: the nature of Clemens's family participation in his writing process, the degree to which their experiences as women during the mid- and late nineteenth century affected his writing, and the extent to which the loss of his family may have impeded and ultimately ended his ability to write lengthy narratives. Skandera-Trombley points out that in marrying Livy, Clemens not only joined a family of substantial means, but also entered one active in thesuffragist, abolitionist, and other reformist movements, which had deep roots in the progressive community of Elmira, New York. Mark Twain in the Company of Women will be of interest to Twain scholars and readers as well as students in American studies, women's studies, nineteenth-century history, and political and cultural studies.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>"Mark Twain's autobiography is a classic of American letters, to be ranked with the autobiographies of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Adams.... It has the marks of greatness in it--style, scope, imagination, laughter, tragedy."</BLOCKQUOTE><DIV ALIGN=RIGHT>--From the Introduction by Charles Neider</DIV><P>Mark Twain was a figure larger than fife: massive in talent, eruptive in temperament, unpredictable in his actions. He crafted stories of heroism, adventure, tragedy, and comedy that reflected the changing America of the time, and he tells his own story--which includes sixteen pages of photos--with the same flair he brought to his fiction. Writing this autobiography on his deathbed, Twain vowed to he "free and frank and unembarrassed" in the recounting of his life and his experiences.</P><P>Twain was more than a match for the expanding America of riverboats, gold rushes, and the vast westward movement, which provided the material for his novels and which served to inspire this beloved and uniquely American autobiography.</P>

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This is Mark Twain's memories of his beloved wife Livy and daughter Susy - what they meant to him as a husband, a father, and an artist -constitute a poignant self-portrait. At the same time, this text draws on Twain's immense autobiographical writings for some of his best comic anecdotes.

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MAINLY THE TRUTH with Mark Twain is a collection of the most colorful and vivacious interviews that Mark Twain gave to newspapers and reporters throughout his career. A master storyteller and raconteur, Twain understood the value of publicity, and these interviews capture Twain both at his most lively and in moments of candor and introspection. In his interviews, Twain discussed such topical issues as hazing and civil service reform, and more enduring concerns, such as his lecture style, his writings, government corruption, humor, his bankruptcy, racism, women's suffrage, imperialism, international copyright, and his impressions of other writers (Howells, Gorky, George Bernard Shaw, Tennyson, Longfellow, Kipling, Hawthorne, Dickens, Bret Harte, among others). These interviews are both oral performances in their own right and a new basis for evaluating contemporary responses to Twain's writings.

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This book explores how this son of slaveholders came to write one of the greatest anti-racist novels of all time--and why this remarkable odyssey is so often erased or ignored today. 26 halftones.

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In the last year of his life Mark Twain asserted, "To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature." In Mark Twain, a Literary Life, Everett Emerson, author of The Authentic Mark Twain, revisits one of America's greatest and most popular writers. Building upon that earlier work, he explores the relationship between the life of the writer and his writings. The assumption throughout is that to see Mark Twain's writings in focus, one must give proper attention to their biographical context. Mark Twain's literary career is fascinating in its strangeness. How could this genius have had so little sense of what he should next do? A contemporary observer could never have imagined where his career would subsequently take him and what he would write next. As a young man, Samuel Clemens' first vocation, that of journeyman printer, took him far from home to the sights of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, while his next vocation would give the identity by which we most frequently know him. His choice of "Mark Twain" as a pen name cemented his bond with the river, as did such books as Life on the Mississippi and Huckleberry Finn. Then following an unsuccessful try at silver mining, Clemens worked as a newspaperman, humorist, and lecturer, but also cultivated an interest in playwriting, politics, and philosophizing. In reporting the author's life, Emerson has endeavored to permit Mark Twain to tell his own story as much as possible, through the use of letters and autobiographical writings, some unpublished. These fascinating glimpses into the life of the writer will be of interest to all who have an abiding affection for Samuel Clemens and his extraordinary legacy.

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The fascinating life of the humorist, narrator, and social observer best known as the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is captured candidly in an enjoyable biography for kids who are not quite ready for long, in-depth life histories. Simultaneous.

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Featuring a new introduction and afterword, this classic social satire follows Yankee Hank Morgan after a blow to the head in nineteenth-century Connecticut transports him to 528 A.D., where he proceeds to modernize King Arthur's kingdom. Reprint.

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Describes the boyhood of Samuel Clemens in Missouri and how he came to begin a writing career under the pen name Mark Twain.

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