Brief biography of Mark Twain, an outstanding American writer. Mark Twain

Mark Twain (real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens) - American writer, journalist and public figure - was born November 30, 1835 in Florida (Missouri, USA).

He was the third of four surviving children (there were seven in all) of John Marshall Clemens (August 11, 1798 - March 24, 1847) and Jane Lampton (1803-1890). The family was of Cornish, English and Scotch-Irish ancestry. The father, being a native of Virginia, was named after Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall. The parents met when John moved to Missouri and married on May 6, 1823 at Columbia in Kentucky.

In total, John and Jane had seven children, of whom only four survived: Samuel himself, his brothers Orion (July 17, 1825 - December 11, 1897) and Henry (1838-1858), and sister Pamela (1827-1904). When Samuel was 4 years old, the family moved to the city of Hannibal (in the same place, in Missouri) in search of a better life. It was this city and its inhabitants that were later described by Mark Twain in his famous works, especially in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer ( 1876 ).

Clemens' father died in 1847 of pneumonia, leaving many debts. The eldest son, Orion, soon began publishing a newspaper, and Sam began to contribute as much as he could as a compositor and occasionally as a writer. Some of the newspaper's liveliest and most controversial articles came from the pen of his younger brother, usually when Orion was away. Sam himself also occasionally traveled to St. Louis and New York.

Clemens began to work as a pilot on a steamer. It was a profession that, according to Clemens himself, he would have been doing all his life if the civil war had not put an end to private shipping. in 1861. So Clemens was forced to look for another job.

After a short acquaintance with the people's militia (this experience he vividly described in 1885), Clemens in July 1861 left the war to the west. Then his brother Orion was offered the position of secretary to the governor of the Nevada Territory. Sam and Orion traveled across the prairies in a stagecoach for two weeks to a Virginia mining town where silver was mined in Nevada.

The experience of living in the Western United States shaped Twain as a writer and formed the basis of his second book. In Nevada, hoping to get rich, Sam Clemens became a miner and began mining silver. He had to live for a long time in the camp with other prospectors - this way of life he later described in literature. But Clemens could not become a successful prospector, he had to leave silver mining and get a job at the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in the same place in Virginia. In this newspaper, he first used the pseudonym "Mark Twain".

In 1864 he moved to San Francisco, where he began to write for several newspapers at the same time. In 1865 Twain's first literary success came, his humorous story "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras" was reprinted throughout the country and called "the best piece of humorous literature created in America to this point."

Spring 1866 Twain was sent by the Sacramento Union newspaper to Hawaii. During the journey, he had to write letters about his adventures. Upon their return to San Francisco, these letters were a resounding success. Colonel John McComb, publisher of the Alta California newspaper, suggested that Twain go on a tour of the state, giving fascinating lectures. The lectures immediately became wildly popular, and Twain traveled all over the state, entertaining the audience and collecting a dollar from each listener.

Twain's first success as a writer was on another journey. In 1867 he begged Colonel McComb to sponsor his trip to Europe and the Middle East. In June, as a correspondent for the Alta California and the New York Tribune, Twain traveled to Europe on the steamer Quaker City. In August he also visited Odessa, Yalta and Sevastopol (in the "Odessa Bulletin" dated August 24, 1867, the "Address" of American tourists written by Twain is placed). As part of the ship's delegation, Mark Twain visited the residence of the Russian emperor in Livadia.

Letters written by Twain during his travels in Europe and Asia were sent to his editor and published in the newspaper, and later formed the basis of the book "Simples Abroad". The book is out in 1869, distributed by subscription and was a huge success. Until the very end of his life, many knew Twain precisely as the author of "Simples Abroad". During his writing career, Twain traveled to Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

In 1870, at the peak of success from "Simples Abroad", Twain married Olivia Langdon and moved to Buffalo, New York. From there he moved to the city of Hartford (Connecticut). During this period, he lectured frequently in the United States and England. Then he began to write sharp satire, sharply criticizing American society and politicians, this is especially noticeable in the collection Life on the Mississippi, written by in 1883.

One of Mark Twain's inspirations was John Ross Brown's note-taking style.

Twain's greatest contribution to American and world literature is the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Also very popular are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Life on the Mississippi, a collection of autobiographical short stories. Mark Twain began his career with unpretentious humorous couplets, and ended with sketches of human manners full of subtle irony, sharply satirical pamphlets on socio-political topics, and philosophically deep and, at the same time, very pessimistic reflections on the fate of civilization.

Many public speeches and lectures were lost or not recorded; individual works and letters were banned from publication by the author himself during his lifetime and for decades after his death.

Twain was an excellent orator. Having received recognition and fame, Mark Twain spent a lot of time searching for young literary talents and helping them to break through, using his influence and the publishing company he acquired.

Twain was fond of science and scientific problems. He was very friendly with Nikola Tesla, they spent a lot of time together in Tesla's laboratory. In his work A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Twain introduced time travel, as a result of which many modern technologies were introduced in Arthurian England. The technical details given in the novel testify to Twain's good acquaintance with the achievements of contemporary science.

Two of Mark Twain's other most famous hobbies were playing billiards and smoking. Visitors to Twain's house sometimes said that there was such thick tobacco smoke in the writer's office that it was almost impossible to see the owner himself.

Twain was a prominent figure in the American Anti-Imperial League which protested the American annexation of the Philippines. In response to these events, in which about 600 people died, Twain wrote the pamphlet "The Incident in the Philippines", but the work was published only in 1924 , 14 years after his death.

From time to time, some of Twain's works were banned by American censors for various reasons. This was mainly due to the active civic and social position of the writer. Some works that could offend the religious feelings of people, Twain did not print at the request of his family. So, for example, "The Mysterious Stranger" remained unpublished before 1916. One of Twain's most controversial works was a humorous lecture at a Parisian club, published under the title Reflections on the Science of Onanism. The essay was only published in 1943 limited edition of 50 copies. Several more anti-religious works remained unpublished until the 1940s.

Twain himself treated censorship with irony. When in 1885 When a public library in Massachusetts decided to withdraw The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from its collection, Twain wrote to his publisher:

"They've taken Huck out of the library as 'slum-only trash' because of that we'll no doubt sell another 25,000 copies."

In the 2000s In the United States, attempts were again made to ban The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because of naturalistic descriptions and verbal expressions offensive to blacks. Although Twain was an opponent of racism and imperialism and went much further than his contemporaries in his rejection of racism, many of the words that were in common use during the time of Mark Twain and used by him in the novel do indeed sound like racial slurs now. February 2011в США вышло первое издание книг Марка Твена «Приключения Гекльберри Финна» и «Приключения Тома Сойера», в котором подобные слова и выражения заменены на политкорректные (например, слово «nigger» (негр) заменено по тексту на «slave» (раб)) .

Before his death, the writer survived the loss of three of his four children, and his wife Olivia also died. In his later years, Twain was deeply depressed, but he could still joke. In response to an erroneous obituary in the New York Journal, he uttered his famous line: "The rumors of my death are somewhat exaggerated." Twain's financial situation was also shaken: his publishing company went bankrupt; he invested a lot of money in a new model of the printing press, which was never put into production; plagiarists stole the rights to several of his books.

In 1893 Twain was introduced to oil tycoon Henry Rogers, one of the directors of the Standard Oil Company. Rogers helped Twain to profitably reorganize his financial affairs, and the two became close friends. Twain often visited Rogers, they drank and played poker. We can say that Twain even became a family member for the Rogers. Sudden death of Rogers 1909 deeply shocked Twain.

Samuel Clemens, known worldwide as Mark Twain, has died April 21, 1910, at the age of 75, from angina pectoris (angina pectoris). A year before his death, he said: "I came in 1835 with Halley's Comet, a year later it arrives again, and I expect to leave with it." And so it happened.

The writer was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York.

Artworks:
"The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras", a collection of short stories ( 1867 )
"The Story of Mamie Grant, Missionary Girl" ( 1868 )
"Simples Abroad, or the Way of New Pilgrims" ( 1869 )
"Tempered" ( 1871 )
"Gilded Age" ( 1873 ), the novel was written jointly with Ch.D. Warner
"Old and New Essays" ( 1875 ), storybook
"Old Times on the Mississippi" ( 1875 )
"Adventures of Tom Sawyer" ( 1876 )
"Prince and the Pauper" ( 1881 )
"Life on the Mississippi" ( 1883 )
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 1884 )
"Knights of Labor - a new dynasty" ( 1886 )
"Letter from a Guardian Angel" 1887 ), published in 1946
"A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" 1889 )
"Adam's Diary" 1893 )
"Coot Wilson" ( 1894 )
"Personal reminiscences of Joan of Arc by Sieur Louis de Comte, her page and secretary" ( 1896 )
"School Hill", remained unfinished ( 1898 )
"The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" ( 1900 )
"Deal with Satan" 1904 )
"Eve's Diary" 1905 )
"Three Thousand Years Among Microbes (The Life of a Microbe, with Notes by the Same Hand Seven Thousand Years Later). Translated from microbial by Mark Twain. 1905" ( 1905 )
"Letters from the Earth" ( 1909 )
"No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger. An old manuscript found in a jar. Free translation from a jug”, remained unfinished ( 1902-1908 )

The biography of Mark Twain is full of interesting events that will be of interest to schoolchildren studying his works. The future classic of American literature was born in 1835 in the village of Florida (Missouri). We can say that his parents were already Native Americans (natives of Virginia and Kentucky).

The father died when the boy was 13 years old, the mother lived a long life and died at the age of 87. In addition to Sam, the family had 3 more children: two boys and a girl. After the death of his father, Sam's older brother Orion became the head of the family. It was he who opened the family business: he began to publish a newspaper. Samuel also worked in the publishing house, first as a typesetter, and then as a journalist. As a journalist, he traveled the country, visited St. Louis and New York.

After working for his brother for a while, Samuel realized that the river was "calling" him. He became a pilot on a steamship. He liked the work, but the Civil War led to the disappearance of the private shipping company. Samuel was forced to start looking for a livelihood again.

It is known that at the very beginning of the Civil War, the future writer became a member of the Masonic lodge, although he always treated the brotherhood with humor.

During the Civil War

For a time, Samuel fought in the ranks of the people's militia, but after his brother was made secretary to the governor of Nevada, he left with him to the West.

In Nevada, Sam worked at a mine as a silver miner. Then he got a job at the Territorial Enterprise newspaper.

In 1864, Sam moved to San Francisco, where he began working for several newspapers at once.

First literary experiences

Twain published his first humorous story in 1865. It brought him success and was even named the best humorous story created in America by an American writer. Twain spent the next year on business trips. He performed editorial assignments for newspapers and lectured throughout the state, and in 1866 Twain traveled abroad for the first time, visiting Europe and the Middle East. Interestingly, during this trip, he also visited the Russian Empire, in particular, visited the Crimea.

In 1867, Twain published the book "Simples Abroad", in fact, these were travel notes. The book was a wild success. Mark Twain became very popular.

After 1870, Twain came to grips with writing. Also at this time, he began teaching at a number of universities in the United States and England. Twain was an excellent speaker and his lectures were incredibly popular.

In his later works, the author spoke out against racism and imperialism, criticized current US senators, and spoke negatively about presidents. By the way, his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was banned several times, as they believed that the words and expressions used by the authors were unliterary, and many scenes were too naturalistic.

Family

Mark Twain was married to Olivia Langdon. They lived together for about 20 years, had 4 children, three of whom died in childhood. The writer survived his wife and deeply experienced her death, even fell into depression.

Last years

In recent years, the writer's financial affairs have been greatly shaken, but the situation was saved by the oil tycoon Henry Rogers, who became a close friend of the writer. Mark Twain greatly influenced the character of the American businessman and made him a real philanthropist and philanthropist. Roger, at the request of the writer, organized several charitable foundations that sponsored educational programs for African Americans and for children with disabilities.

The writer was buried several times. After another obituary, Mark Twain even uttered the catchphrase that the rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated.

He died in 1910 from an attack of angina pectoris. It is known that he was born in the year when Halley's comet passed over the earth, he also “left” with it, since in 1910 it again passed by the Earth (by the way, the writer actually predicted his death).

Other biography options

• The most important thing is that historians and biographers have long argued (and still argue) about the origin of the pseudonym "Mark Twain". Some have associated it with river navigation terms. Others believed that this pseudonym was taken by the writer after reading the novels of Artemus Ward (the main character of one of the works just bore the name Mark Twain).
• Maxim Gorky and Alexander Kuprin were very fond of the work of Mark Twain, believing that it largely shaped the views of American society, including the eradication of racial prejudices.
• A brief biography of Mark Twain is of particular interest to children, since the works of Mark Twain are studied in grades 5-6 of high school.

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If Henry James deepened the national consciousness, at the same time opening it to the world outside the United States, and enriched American literature with stylistic virtuosity, then Mark Twain (1835-1910) gave it an inimitable freedom of expression. He became the voice of doubt and contradiction, nostalgia for the past and hope for the future of post-war America. "The Lincoln of our literature," Howells said of him.

Twain's popularity during his lifetime was great - it did not fade after. As for his recognition by literary criticism, here he was much less fortunate. His contemporaries in the USA praised him as "an incomparable entertainer of the public", "an unsurpassed master of jester's bells". The reputation of "joker" and "amusing" gave Twain many bitter moments, especially in the last decades of his life. In the first half of the 20th century, the opposite view of the writer as "an ardent exposer of the vices of the capitalist system" developed. Meanwhile, this approach is also not quite correct.

Herself Biography of Mark Twain serves as the clearest illustration of the realization of the "American dream", proof of the dizzying opportunities that open up in America to any talented and active person, regardless of his social background. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who wrote under the pseudonym Mark Twain (in pilot jargon: "measure two", that is, a safe depth of two fathoms for navigation - a kind of creative credo of the writer), was a native of the American Southwest.

His parents, poor but good southern Virginians, moved west with the whole country and first settled in the frontier village of Florida, Missouri, where Samuel Clemens was born, and four years later moved to the town of Hannibal on the banks of the Mississippi. Twain's father, a justice of the peace, died when his son was eleven years old, and he had to leave school to earn a living. The main population of the region was then pastoralists and farmers. Their life was difficult and not too refined, and humor, the ability to laugh at the situation and at oneself, served as a great help in the harsh frontier life. Twain, left to himself from childhood, grew up among the bearers of the folklore tradition of the frontier and deeply perceived the tales, anecdotes and practical jokes characteristic of it. This was the fresh source that then fed his work.

As a true descendant of the pioneers, Twain was not inclined to philosophize slyly and always wrote only about what he knew well. And he knew a lot: his life experience at the beginning of his writing career turned out to be very extensive. He managed to work as a typographical compositor, sail for two years as a pilot's mate, and then as a pilot on the Mississippi, fight as a militia in the Confederate army in the Civil, until, as he explained, he "became ashamed to fight for the preservation of slavery." After that, he moved to Nevada and California, contributing to newspapers, publishing humorous stories and sketches about the West, which were then included in the collection The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras (1867).

Already early stories and two books of comic travel essays, Simpletons Abroad (1869) and Light (1872), reveal the specifics of Twain's humor - its inextricable connection with frontier folklore, which will also distinguish the best mature works of the writer. Twain's favorite form of narration in the first person, a kind of "simpleton's mask" that the narrator often wears, a tendency to exaggerate - all these are features of the frontiersmen's oral story. Finally, Twain's individual creative method is based on the main principle of American folk humor - the comic play on ridiculous, and sometimes tragic situations. American folklore determined the very spirit of Twain's works - humanism, respect for the working man, for his reason and common sense, victorious optimism.

Making fun of such qualities of his compatriots as arrogance, arrogance, religious hypocrisy and ignorance, Twain acted primarily as a patriot of his great country: he resorted to laughter as a powerful weapon of moral influence.

"Simps Abroad" strengthened the author's financial position, and he bought a daily newspaper in Buffalo, New York, became its editor and married the beautiful Olivia Langdon, the daughter and heiress of a coalminer. The marriage proved exceptionally happy; family well-being was an important part of Twain's life success and his public reputation. In 1871 he acquired his own home in Hartford, a city that occupied, both geographically and intellectually, an intermediate position between the two literary capitals of New York and Boston. A certain writing environment has already developed here: G. Beecher Stowe, C.D. Warner and others.

The mansion at 351 Farmington Avenue, now the Mark Twain Museum, was one of the landmarks of Hartford - massive, built of stone and brick, it resembled a steamboat, a medieval fortress and a cuckoo's house in a clock. Twain went overseas for the second time - no longer as a correspondent sent by a New York magazine and obliged to send travel reports, as for the first time, but as a wealthy tourist and an American celebrity, to take a break from the mustiness of the "Gilded Age" (such was the name novel, co-authored with C. D. Warner in 1873) and "breathe the free air of Europe."

The result, however, as in the first case, was a book of travel prose "Walking in Europe" (1880), as well as a historical novel in English material "The Prince and the Pauper" (1881). By this time, Twain's individual style had already fully developed, and one after another his best works came out: "Old Times on the Mississippi" (1875), "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876), "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1885), "A Yankee from Connecticut in the Court of King Arthur" (1889).

By the mid-1880s, Twain seemed to have achieved everything, both personally and creatively, that a boy from a frontier village and a small town on the banks of a large river could only dream of: he had money, family happiness, a strong position in society and in literary circles (thanks to a long friendship with W. D. Howells, editor-in-chief of the influential New York magazine Atlantic Mansley), all-American and international literary fame. The minion of fate, the living embodiment of the "American dream" that came true - this is how Mark Twain appears at the zenith of his career.

He, however, did not at all intend to rest on his laurels; tireless pioneer spirit, overflowing creative energy forced him to look for new ways in literature. Turning off the road already beaten by him as a recognized realist, Twain entered an area that was very little (only in the course of some of his and his predecessors' "partisan attacks") mastered by national literature. He created not a humorous story or a sketch, but a full-length novel in a southwestern dialect, which is told from the point of view of an illiterate boy at the very bottom of the social ladder. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took eight years to complete, but it was a masterpiece, not immediately, but unanimously recognized in the end.

In the last two decades of Twain's life, fate seemed to turn its back on him. His literary fame, however, remained unchanged, but already an aging and always very successful person, one after another, personal misfortunes began to comprehend. The enterprise, in which Twain had invested large sums, burst, and in order to improve the financial situation of the family, Twain had to go on a public speaking tour of Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa - an experience he described in the book of travel essays "On the Equator" (1897). While working on this book in London, Twain received a cable about the death of his beloved daughter from meningitis. He really barely recovered from the shock, so that in the famous Twain joke, sent by him from London in 1897: "The rumors about my death are greatly exaggerated" - there was a fair amount of truth.

One way or another, he survived and, having improved his financial situation, returned to the United States in 1900. The roar of welcoming voices that met him did not stop until the writer's death: "The hero of our literature," the newspaper headlines screamed, "the most famous person on the planet!" He was the idol of New York society and the most quoted writer of his time. With bitter stoicism, Twain met the news of the incurable illness of his youngest daughter, and then the death of his beloved wife, with whom he had been happy for 35 years.

A showman of genius, and not just a writer, he invariably appeared in a white suit, proudly carrying his head with a mop of gray curls and a halo of tobacco smoke: he explained that his rule was “never smoke in your sleep and never abstain from it while you are awake.” ". Meanwhile, Twain's work demonstrated profound changes in his worldview. First of all, his style has changed: the former sparkling and joyful unpredictability have been replaced by impeccable logical clarity.

In later works, notes of despair sound, and they become more and more gloomy and hopeless. Modern American life practically leaves Twain's own artistic works and becomes exclusively the topic of his journalism. In the 1900s, Twain's pamphlets were published one after another, such as "A War Prayer", "To a Man Walking in Darkness", "We are Anglo-Saxons", "The United Lynching States" and, finally, "What is a Man?", the meaning of which is extremely sharply expressed in the titles.

These pamphlets increasingly denounce power politics, imperialism, racism, financial abuse, hypocrisy in morality and religion, and other manifestations of what our critics have long called "the vices of the capitalist system" and Twain called "the damned human race." As for the major works of the late Twain, the last of them devoted to American life was the novel "Coot Wilson" (1894). The skeptical epigraphs prefixed to the chapters testified to the author's growing pessimism: "If you pick up a dog that is dying of hunger and feed it, it will not bite you. This is the fundamental difference between a dog and a man."

Further notable books of the writer, except, of course, "Autobiography", removed from American reality in time and space. She, however, now and then declares herself in them in the form of attacks on mercantilism and stupid cruelty, allegedly inherent only in past eras ("Personal Memoirs of Joan of Arc", 1896). Reality makes itself felt in the general gloomy tone of the works, in that position of stoic despair that the author occupies. Such is Eve's Diary (1905), a kind of epitaph to a recently deceased wife, which concludes with the words of Adam: "Where she was, there was Paradise."

Such is "The Mysterious Stranger", a story on which the writer has been working since 1898, and which was published only after his death, in 1916, a kind of spiritual testament of Twain. The mysterious stranger who appears to the three boys and strikes them with miracles is Satan himself. It exists "beyond good and evil" and its final statement sheds light on the author's state of mind: "Everything I'm telling you now is the truth. There is no God, there is no universe, there is no human race, there is no life, there is no Paradise, no hell. It's all just a dream, an intricate, stupid dream. There's nothing but you. And you're just a thought, a wandering thought, an aimless thought, a homeless thought, lost in eternal space."

Towards the end of his life, Twain was inclined to deny his role as America's greatest comic genius and in vain expected to be listened to seriously. The audience continued to laugh at the "Famous Jumping Frog", while he wrote: "Everything human is sad. The secret source of humor is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven." Twain died in Stormfield, his last home, built in the style of an Italian villa and located on a hilltop in Redding, Connecticut.

Twain Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835-1910)

American writer. Born in Florida, Missouri. He spent his childhood in the town of Hannibal on the Mississippi. He was an apprentice compositor and later published a newspaper with his brother in Hannibal, then in Mescatine and Keokuk, Iowa. In 1857 he became a pilot's apprentice, having realized his childhood dream of "knowing the river", in April 1859 he received the rights of a pilot.

In 1861 he moved to his brother in Nevada, for almost a year he was a prospector in the silver mines. Having written several humoresques for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City, in August 1862 he received an invitation to become its employee. For a pseudonym, he took the expression of lotovs on the Mississippi, who called out "Measure 2", which meant sufficient depth for safe navigation.

In May 1864, Twain left for San Francisco, worked for two years in California newspapers, incl. Correspondent of the California "Union" in the Hawaiian Islands. In 1871 he moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where he lived for 20 years, his happiest years. In 1884 he founded a publishing firm.

Twain came to literature late. At the age of 27 he became a professional journalist, at the age of 34 he published his first book. The early publications are interesting mainly as evidence of a good knowledge of the gruff humor of the American hinterland. From the very beginning, his newspaper publications bore the features of an artistic essay.

In 1872, the autobiographical book "The Hardened" was published - about the people and customs of the Wild West. Three years later, Twain released a collection of his best stories - "Old and New Essays", after which his popularity increased dramatically. In 1876 he published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the phenomenal success of the book forced him to write a sequel called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Between these novels, Twain released another autobiographical book, Life on the Mississippi. He was fond of the history of the European Middle Ages and first wrote the story "The Prince and the Pauper", then the novel "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". In 1895 he traveled around the world, visiting Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, India and South Africa with lectures.

Died in Rudding, Connecticut.

Nickname

Before the start of a literary career

But the call of the Mississippi River eventually drew Clemens to work as a steamboat pilot. A profession that, according to Clemens himself, he would have practiced all his life if the civil war had not put an end to private shipping in 1861. So Clemens was forced to look for another job.

After a short acquaintance with the people's militia (this experience he colorfully described in 1885), Clemens left the war in July 1861 to the west. Then his brother Orion was offered the position of secretary to the governor of the Nevada Territory. Sam and Orion traveled across the prairies in a stagecoach for two weeks to a Virginia mining town where silver was mined in Nevada.

In the West

Mark Twain

The experience of living in the Western United States shaped Twain as a writer and formed the basis of his second book. In Nevada, hoping to get rich, Sam Clemens became a miner and began mining silver. He had to live for a long time in the camp with other prospectors - this way of life he later described in literature. But Clemens could not become a successful prospector, he had to leave silver mining and get a job at the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in the same place in Virginia. In this newspaper, he first used the pseudonym "Mark Twain". And in 1864 he moved to San Francisco, California, where he began to write for several newspapers at the same time. In 1865, Twain's first literary success came, his humorous story "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras" was reprinted throughout the country and called "the best work of humorous literature created in America to this point."

creative career

Twain's greatest contribution to American and world literature is considered to be The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Also very popular are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Life on the Mississippi, a collection of autobiographical stories. Mark Twain began his career with unpretentious humorous couplets, and ended with sketches of human manners full of subtle irony, sharply satirical pamphlets on socio-political topics, and philosophically deep and, at the same time, very pessimistic reflections on the fate of civilization.

Many public speeches and lectures were lost or not recorded; individual works and letters were banned from publication by the author himself during his lifetime and for decades after his death.

Twain was an excellent orator. Having received recognition and fame, Mark Twain spent a lot of time searching for young literary talents and helping them to break through, using his influence and the publishing company he acquired.

Twain was fond of science and scientific problems. He was very friendly with Nikola Tesla, they spent a lot of time together in Tesla's laboratory. In his work A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Twain introduced time travel, as a result of which many modern technologies were introduced in England during the time of King Arthur. The technical details given in the novel testify to Twain's good acquaintance with the achievements of contemporary science.

Two of Mark Twain's other most famous hobbies were playing billiards and smoking pipes. Visitors to Twain's house sometimes said that there was such thick tobacco smoke in the writer's office that it was almost impossible to see the owner himself.

Twain was a prominent figure in the American Anti-Imperial League which protested the American annexation of the Philippines. In response to these events, in which about 600 people died, he wrote The Philippines Incident, but the work was not published until 1924, 14 years after Twain's death.

From time to time, some of Twain's works were banned by American censors for various reasons. This was mainly due to the active civic and social position of the writer. Some works that could offend the religious feelings of people, Twain did not print at the request of his family. So, for example, The Mysterious Stranger remained unpublished until 1916. Perhaps Twain's most controversial work was a humorous lecture at a Parisian club, published under the title Reflections on the Science of Onanism. The central idea of ​​the lecture was: "If you have to risk your life on the sexual front, don't masturbate too much." The essay was published only in 1943 in a limited edition of 50 copies. A few more anti-religious writings remained unpublished until the 1940s.

Mark Twain himself treated censorship with irony. When the Massachusetts Public Library decided to withdraw The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, Twain wrote to his publisher:

They expelled Huck from the library as "slum-only rubbish" and we'll no doubt sell another 25,000 copies because of that.

In the 2000s, attempts were again made in the United States to ban The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because of naturalistic descriptions and verbal expressions that were offensive to blacks. Although Twain was an opponent of racism and imperialism and went much further than his contemporaries in his rejection of racism, many of the words that were in general use during the time of Mark Twain and used by him in the novel do now sound like racial slurs. In February 2011, the first edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published in the United States, in which such words and expressions were replaced with politically correct ones (for example, the word «ниггер» replaced in text with "slave") .

Last years

Mark Twain's success gradually began to fade. Until his death in 1910, he suffered the loss of three of his four children, and his beloved wife, Olivia, also died. In his later years, Twain was deeply depressed, but he could still joke. In response to an erroneous obituary in the New York Journal, he famously said: "The rumors of my death are somewhat exaggerated." Twain's financial situation was also shaken: his publishing company went bankrupt; he invested a lot of money in a new model of the printing press, which was never put into production; plagiarists stole the rights to several of his books.

Mark Twain was an avid cat person.

Personal position

Political Views

You can read Mark Twain's views on the ideal form of government and political regime by reading his speech "The Knights of Labor - a new dynasty", which he delivered on March 22, 1886 in the city of Hartford, at a meeting of the Monday Night Club. This speech was first published under the title "The New Dynasty" in September 1957 in the New England Quarterly.

Mark Twain adhered to the position that power should belong only and only to the people. He believed that

The power of one man over others means oppression - invariably and always oppression; though not always conscious, deliberate, deliberate, not always severe, or grave, or cruel, or indiscriminate, but one way or another, always oppression in one form or another. To whomever you entrust power, it will certainly manifest itself in oppression. Give power to the Dahomey king - and he will immediately begin to test the accuracy of his brand new rapid-fire rifle on everyone who passes by his palace; people will fall one by one, but neither he nor his courtiers will ever think that he is doing something inappropriate. Give power to the head of the Christian Church in Russia - the emperor - and with one wave of his hand, as if driving away midges, he will send an uncountable multitude of young men, mothers with babies in their arms, gray-haired old men and young girls to the unimaginable hell of his Siberia, and he himself will calmly go to breakfast, without even realizing what barbarity he had just committed. Give power to Constantine or Edward IV, or Peter the Great, or Richard III - I could name a hundred more monarchs - and they will kill their closest relatives, after which they will fall asleep perfectly, even without sleeping pills ... Give power to anyone - and this power will be oppress.

The author divided people into two categories: oppressors And oppressed. The first are few - the king, a handful of other overseers and assistants, and the second are many - these are the peoples of the world: the best representatives of humanity, working people - those who earn bread with their labor. Mark Twain believed that all the rulers that have so far ruled the world sympathized with and patronized the classes and clans of gilded loafers, clever embezzlers of public funds, tireless intriguers, troublemakers of public peace, thinking only about their own benefit. And according to the great writer, the only ruler or king should be the people themselves:

But this king is a born enemy of those who intrigue and say beautiful words, but do not work. He will be our reliable defense against socialists, communists, anarchists, against vagabonds and mercenary agitators who advocate "reforms" that would give them a piece of bread and fame at the expense of honest people. He will be our refuge and protection against them and against all kinds of political sickness, infection and death. How does he use his power? First - for oppression. For he is no more virtuous than those who ruled before him, and does not want to mislead anyone. The only difference is that he will oppress the minority, and those oppressed the majority; he will oppress thousands, and those oppressed millions. But he will not throw anyone into prison, he will not whip, torture, burn at the stake and exile anyone, he will not force his subjects to work eighteen hours a day, and he will not starve their families. He will make sure that everything is fair - a fair working day, a fair wage.

Attitude towards religion

Twain's wife, a deeply religious Protestant (Congregationalist), was never able to "convert" her husband, although he tried to avoid sensitive topics during her lifetime. Many of Twain's novels (for example, "A Yankee in King Arthur's Court") contain extremely harsh attacks on the Catholic Church. In recent years, Twain has written many religious stories that ridicule the Protestant ethic (for example, "Inquisitive Bessie").

Now let's talk about the true God, the real God, the great God, the highest and supreme God, the true creator of the real universe ... - a universe not handcrafted for an astronomical nursery, but brought into being in the boundless expanse of space at the command of the just mentioned true God, a God unimaginably great and majestic, in comparison with which all other gods, swarming in myriads in the miserable human imagination, are like a swarm of mosquitoes lost in the infinity of an empty sky ...
As we explore the countless wonders, splendor, brilliance and perfection of this infinite universe (now we know that the universe is infinite) and find that everything in it, from a stalk of grass to the forest giants of California, from an unknown mountain stream to a boundless ocean, from the course of the tides and ebbs to the majestic movement of the planets, unquestioningly obeys a strict system of precise laws that know no exceptions, we comprehend - we do not assume, we do not conclude, but comprehend - that God, who created this incredibly complex world with a single thought, and created the laws governing it with another thought - this God is endowed with unlimited power ...
Do we know that he is just, gracious, kind, meek, merciful, compassionate? No. We have no evidence that he possesses even one of these qualities - and at the same time, every passing day brings us hundreds of thousands of evidence - no, not evidence, but irrefutable evidence - that he does not possess any of them. .

Due to his complete absence of any of those qualities that could adorn a god, inspire respect for him, arouse reverence and worship, a real god, a genuine god, the creator of an immense universe is no different from all the other gods available. Every day he shows quite clearly that he has no interest in either man or other animals - except to torture them, destroy them and extract some entertainment from this activity, while doing everything possible to keep his eternal and unchanging monotony he didn't like it.

• Mark Twain. Collected works in eleven volumes. - St. Petersburg. : Type. brothers Panteleev, 1896-1899.
  • Volume 1. "The American Pretender", humorous essays and stories;
  • Volume 2. "A Yankee in King Arthur's Court";
  • Volume 3. "The Adventures of Tom Sower", "Tom Sower Abroad";
  • Volume 4. "Life on the Mississippi";
  • Volume 5. "The Adventures of Finn Huckleberry, Comrade Tom Sower";
  • Volume 6. "A walk abroad";
  • Volume 7. The Prince and the Pauper, Tom Sower's Investigative Exploits in Huck Finn's Show;
  • Volume 8. Stories;
  • Volume 9. The Innocent at Home and Abroad;
  • Volume 10. The Innocent at Home and Abroad (conclusion);
  • Volume 11. "Wilson Chaffhead", from "New Wanderings Around the World".
• Mark Twain. Collected works in 12 volumes. - M .: GIHL, 1959.
  • Volume 1. Simpletons abroad, or the path of new pilgrims.
  • Volume 2. Light.
  • Volume 3. The Gilded Age.
  • Volume 4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Life on the Mississippi.
  • Volume 5. On foot in Europe. Prince and the Pauper.
  • Volume 6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court.
  • Volume 7. American Challenger. Tom Sawyer abroad. Dumb Wilson.
  • Volume 8. Personal memories of Joan of Arc.
  • Volume 9. Along the equator. A mysterious stranger.
  • Volume 10. Stories. Essays. Publicism. 1863-1893.
  • Volume 11. Stories. Essays. Publicism. 1894-1909.
  • Volume 12. From "Autobiography". From Notebooks.
• Mark Twain. Collected Works in 8 volumes. - M .: "Pravda" (Library "Spark"), 1980.
• Mark Twain. Collected Works in 8 volumes. - M .: Voice, Verb, 1994. - ISBN 5-900288-05-6 ISBN 5-900288-09-9.
• Mark Twain. Collected works in 18 volumes. - M .: Terra, 2002. - ISBN 5-275-00668-3, ISBN 5-275-00670-5.

About Twain

• Alexandrov, V. Mark Twain and Russia. // Questions of Literature. No. 10 (1985), pp. 191-204.
• Balditsyn P.V. The work of Mark Twain and the national character of American literature. - M.: Publishing house "VK", 2004. - 300 p.
• Bobrova M. N. Mark Twain. - M .: Goslitizdat, 1952.
• Zverev, A. M. The world of Mark Twain: an essay on life and work. - M.: Det. lit., 1985. - 175 p.
• Mark Twain in the memoirs of contemporaries. / Comp. A. Nikolyukina; intro. article, comment., decree. V. Oleinik. - M .: Artist. lit., TERRA, 1994. - 415 p. - (A series of literary memoirs).
• Mendelson M. O. Mark Twain. Series: Life of Remarkable People, vol. 15(263). - M .: Young Guard, 1964. - 430 p.
• Romm, A. S. Mark Twain. - M .: Nauka, 1977. - 192 p. - (From the history of world culture).
• Startsev A.I. Mark Twain and America. Preface to Volume I of the Collected Works of Mark Twain in 8 volumes. - M .: Pravda, 1980.

The image of Mark Twain in art

As a literary hero, Mark Twain (under his real name Samuel Clemens) appears in the second and third parts of writer Philip José Farmer's science fiction pentalogy River World. In the second book, entitled "Fairytale Ship", Mark Twain, reborn in the mysterious World of the River, along with all the people who died at different times on Earth, becomes an explorer and adventurer. He dreams of building a large wheeled river steamer to sail down the River to its very source. Over time, he succeeds, but after the construction of the ship, the writer is stolen by his partner, King John the Landless. In the third book, entitled "Dark Designs", Clemens, overcoming numerous difficulties, completes the construction of the second steamship, which they also try to steal from him. In two film adaptations of the cycle, filmed in and 2010, the role of Mark Twain was played by actors Cameron Deidu and Mark Deklin.

Notes

Links

	Mark Twain at Wikiquote
	in Wikisource
	Mark Twain at Wikimedia Commons