Short biography of mark twain

The wages he sent home kept the family afloat. Within a year, however, young Samuel could no longer afford the luxuries of childhood, school and play. Instead, he began his first apprenticeship, to Hannibal printer William Ament, publisher of the grandly named Missouri Courier. In working for Ament, Sam learned about printing, the first mass production industry, almost as it had been practiced from the beginning.

In a country print shop, a printer had to do everything from the editorial side, to type setting, to press-work, to distributing the finished product. There was no division of labor, and only hints of the industrial revolution. Yet brother Orion in St. Louis was working in a major print shop, as a compositor rather than as a printer. Orion, in keeping with craft guild principles, wanted to be his own master, so inhe returned to Hannibal, bought one of the other Hannibal newspapers, the equally grandly named Western Union, and took on his younger brothers Samuel and Henry as his apprentices.

He soon combined his struggling newspaper with the Hannibal Journal, but even a merger could not turn a local paper into a good living, especially for an owner whose politics were not fully congenial to Hannibal. Neither younger brother much appreciated working for their quirky older brother. Orion fancied himself to be a new Benjamin Franklin, and used to badger his younger brothers with Franklin's aphorisms about industry, efficiency, temperance, and frugality.

The frugality was imposed by the fact that such old-fashioned printing was not lucrative, even when it was a central part of the social fabric of the American small town. Young Samuel accepted the push toward industry and temperance, even as younger brother Henry rebelled by being lazy and sloppy in his work. Orion's response to Henry's poor work was often to put more on Samuel.

Naturally, Sam came to resent his position, too. Inhe bolted, heading first for St. Louis to work as a typesetter, then heading out of the Mississippi Valley for the first time to work as a typesetter in a number of eastern cities, including New York and Philadelphia. His correspondence home shows how much he accepted his responsibility to his mother, promising her a portion of his wages, yet his contact with the new industrial economy of the big cities prevented him from making much financial progress in his work.

Demoralized that he was short biography of mark twain to make his fortune, he rejoined his family, which, in the interim, had also abandoned Hannibal. His sister had already moved to St. Louis when in she married William A. Moffet, a successful merchant. His brother Orion had sold his Hannibal print shop to move to Muscatine, Iowa, to free soil, where his abolitionist ideas were neither a threat to his livelihood nor his health.

Samuel at this point did not oppose slavery; his attitudes were shaped primarily by those held by his Missouri neighbors, especially by his father and his Uncle Quarles. While his father never had many slaves, and in financial exigency had been forced to sell, he had helped uphold slavery in Missouri. Mark Twain's own autobiography: the chapters from the North American review 2nd ed.

Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. The Scarecrow Press. Penn State University Press : 45—60 [52, 58]. Archived from the original on July 1, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Archived from the original on February 4, Archived from the original on September 5, Retrieved November 1, Danbury, ConnecticutApril 21, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, "Mark Twain", died at 22 minutes after 6 to-night.

Beside him on the bed lay a beloved book — it was Carlyle's French Revolution — and near the book his glasses, pushed away with a weary sigh a few hours before. Too weak to speak clearly, he had written, "Give me my glasses", on a piece of paper. New York: Random House. Archived from the original on May 22, July 15, Retrieved March 26, Clements, Mark Twain.

Clemens died at his home in Connecticut on April 21, Politico PRO. Archived from the original on July 28, Retrieved October 7, Archived from the original on December 7, Retrieved December 12, Robert Newton ; Madsen, Brigham D. Reminiscences of early Utah : with, Reply to certain statements by O. Salt Lake City: Signature Books. Mark Twain.

New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company. University of Iowa Press. The Californian Illustrated Magazine. University of Nevada, Reno. October 28, Archived from the original on January 4, Retrieved February 26, Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on February 25, Oregon Historical Quarterly.

Short biography of mark twain

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History is a Weapon. King Leopold's ghost : a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved February 11, Archived from the original on February 13, Retrieved December 26, The Atlantic. Retrieved July 29, Mark Twain's Speeches. Perkins School for the Blind. Archived from the original on June 11, Retrieved March 20, December New England Quarterly.

Following the Equator. Retrieved May 8, Blue Corn Comics. May 28, Archived from the short biography of mark twain on September 15, Great Plains Quarterly. Archived from the original on May 17, Retrieved April 21, Duke University Press: — Archived PDF from the original on March 25, Mark Twain in his Times. Archived from the original on April 21, The wit and wisdom of Mark Twain.

Blaisdell, Robert. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. The Quotable Atheist. Nation Books. September 18, Archived from the original on March 14, William E. Ostara publications. What is man? Archived from the original on July 25, Retrieved April 22, In John S. Tuckey; Kenneth M. Sanderson; Bernard L. Stein; Frederick Anderson eds. Mark Twain's Fables of Man.

California: University of California Press. Associated Press. April 2, Archived from the original on April 15, Retrieved October 5, Archived from the original on January 21, Archived from the original on October 5, Retrieved October 30, LDS Living. Archived from the original on January 3, Retrieved October 27, The New Yorker. The earth shook, the rocks split".

Tree by the River Publishing. Archived from the original on May 6, Retrieved June 26, The Mark Twain encyclopedia. Garland Publishing. I made a brave experiment, the other night, to see how it would feel to shock a crowd with these unseasonable clothes, and also to see how long it might take the crowd to reconcile itself to them and stop looking astonished and outraged.

On a stormy evening I made a talk before a full house, in the village, clothed like a ghost, and looking as conspicuous, all solitary and alone on that platform, as any ghost could have looked; and I found, to my gratification, that it took the house less than ten minutes to forget about the ghost and give its attention to the tidings I had brought.

I am nearly seventy-one, and I recognize that my age has given me a good many privileges; valuable privileges; privileges which are not granted to younger persons. Little by little I hope to get together courage enough to wear white clothes all through the winter, in New York. It will be a great satisfaction to me to show off in this way; and perhaps the largest of all the satisfactions will be the knowledge that every scoffer, of my sex, will secretly envy me and wish he dared to follow my lead.

Nathan G. Lucius Beebe. Budd, ed. New York: Alfred A. Mark Twain: Social Critic. New York: International Publishers. Gregg Camfield. The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain. Harrised. Hill, ed. LeMaster and James D. Wilson, eds. New York: Simon and Schuster, Berkeley: University of California Press, XXXI : 25— Kent Rasmussen, ed. The Atlantic Monthly.

Boston: Atlantic Monthly Co. Archived from the original on February 20, Retrieved January 22, ISBN Anonymous Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day. Illustrated by Frederick Waddy. London: Tinsley Brothers. Retrieved March 13, Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mark Twain. At first, he prospected for silver and gold, convinced that he would become the savior of his struggling family and the sharpest-dressed man in Virginia City and San Francisco.

But short biography of mark twain panned out, and by the middle ofhe was flat broke and in need of a regular job. Twain knew his way around a newspaper office, so that September, he went to work as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. He churned out news stories, editorials and sketches, and along the way adopted the pen name Mark Twain — steamboat slang for 12 feet of water.

Twain became one of the best-known storytellers in the West. He honed a distinctive narrative style — friendly, funny, irreverent, often satirical and always eager to deflate the pretentious. He got a big break inwhen one of his tales about life in a mining camp, "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog," was printed in newspapers and magazines around the country the story later appeared under various titles.

His next step up the ladder of success came inwhen he took a five-month sea cruise in the Mediterranean, writing humorously about the sights for American newspapers with an eye toward getting a book out of the trip. InThe Innocents Abroad was published, and it became a nationwide bestseller. At 34, this handsome, red-haired, affable, canny, egocentric and ambitious journalist and traveler had become one of the most popular and famous writers in America.

However, Twain worried about being a Westerner. In those years, the country's cultural life was dictated by an Eastern establishment centered in New York City and Boston — a straight-laced, Victorianmoneyed group that cowed Twain. Twain's fervent wish was to get rich, support his mother, rise socially and receive what he called "the respectful regard of a high Eastern civilization.

In Februaryhe improved his social status by marrying year-old Olivia Livy Langdon, the daughter of a rich New York coal merchant. Writing to a friend shortly after his wedding, Twain could not believe his good luck: "I have Livy, like many people during that time, took pride in her pious, high-minded, genteel approach to life. Twain hoped that she would "reform" him, a mere humorist, from his rustic ways.

The couple settled in Buffalo and later had four children. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published inand soon thereafter he began writing a sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Writing this work, commented biographer Everett Emerson, freed Twain temporarily from the "inhibitions of the culture he had chosen to embrace. Hemingway's comment refers specifically to the colloquial language of Twain's masterpiece, as for perhaps the first time in America, the vivid, raw, not-so-respectable voice of the common folk was used to create great literature.

Huck Finn required years to conceptualize and write, and Twain often put it aside. In the meantime, he pursued respectability with the publication of The Prince and the Paupera charming novel endorsed with enthusiasm by his genteel family and friends. In he put out Life on the Mississippian interesting but safe travel book. Twain became vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League in until his death in Twain was also a staunch supporter of abolition and black emancipation.

The early works of Twain were generally light-hearted and humorous. However, as his writing and life developed, his books and articles increasingly became more serious and focused on the pressing social issues facing America. With the same deft touch and comic turn, Twain became a satirist on the cruelties and injustice of mankind and gave vent to his deeply held beliefs.

Hemingway later wrote that:. After working briefly for the Buffalo Express newspaper, Twain took his family and three daughters to live in Hartford, Connecticut. The family lived there for 17 years, and this gave Mark Twain a firm base to devote himself to writing. It was here that he wrote his best-known books — The Adventures of Tom Sawyerand Adventures of Huckleberry Finn As his fame and profile grew, Twain gained a substantial income through his writing.

However, unfortunately, he lost a small fortune through a misplaced investment in the Paige typesetting machines. Combined with money lost through his own publishing house, Twain faced bankruptcy but was saved with the help of financier Henry Rogers. Twain then worked hard — undertaking a worldwide lecture tour to pay off his debts in full.

Despite a successful writing career and worldwide fame — which included an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford — Twain suffered depression from painful personal tragedies.