An author and platform entertainer who became tremendously popular in his own day, Samuel Clemens participated in the major literary movements of the century and knew virtually every one of his distinguished contemporaries. Biographers have emphasized...

Mark Twain's work captures the child that lives in the American psyche and also presents the confusions of the American adult. As a mature writer, Twain could recreate the small-town boyhood he had known by the Mississippi River in those halcyon years...

In the early spring of 1835 John Marshall Clemens and his wife, Jane, loaded up their possessions, their five children, and their single slave in Three Forks, Tennessee, to move to Missouri. It was another in a long series of migrations which the...

In the early spring of 1835, John Marshall Clemens and his wife, Jane, loaded up their possessions, their five children, and their single slave, in Three Forks, Tennessee, to move to Missouri. It was another in a long series of migrations which the...

Mark Twain is the best-known and most-beloved American writer in the world, and his stature as the quintessential American writer rests in large part upon his "westernness." Born at the edge of the frontier, schooled along the great divide between East...

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to America and the world as Mark Twain, is one of the most loved and read men of American letters. Especially noted for his novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which...

At the end of a long and prolific career with the pen, America's favorite humorist grew reflective about his craft, yet kept his tongue firmly planted in his cheek: "I have always been able to gain my living without doing any work; for the writing of...

For the readers of the late nineteenth century Samuel Clemens was first and foremost a travel writer, not a novelist. He earned his greatest respect and patronage from his contemporaries not for being the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn...

When one considers Samuel Langhorne Clemens's life and writings, the role of literary critic is hardly the first category that comes to mind. Yet in the course of his career he compiled a large body of comment--in essays, sketches, reviews, and...

Mark Twain (1835-1910), American humorist and novelist, captured a world audience with stories of boyhood adventure and with commentary on man's shortcomings that is humorous even while it probes, often bitterly, the roots of human behavior. Bred among...