Langdon (whom he called "Livy") on 2 February 1870, Twain had begun to rehearse his memories of his days as a boy in Hannibal (1839-1853) and as a pilot on the Mississippi River steamboats (1857-1861), and these vivid recollections burst forth in a series of lyrically evocative manuscripts:
Old Times on the Mississippi (serialized in the
Atlantic Monthly, January-June and August 1875; published as a book in 1876); then a boy book accurately named
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876); next a collection of river lore titled
Life on the Mississippi (1883); and, as culmination, his greatest achievement,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). These books, together with his romance of medieval England,
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), and a postscript story of life in a small Mississippi River town,
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), are considered by most critics to constitute his major literary works. In recent years greater notice has been accorded Twain's post-1900 efforts, particularly
The Mysterious Stranger (1916) manuscripts. At intervals throughout his career Twain collected his shorter pieces in book form; the most notable are
Mark Twain's Sketches, New and Old (1875), exuberant and infectiously comic;
The Stolen White Elephant (1882), containing several fine stories;
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900); and
The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906), characteristic in mixing marginal and previous work with superlative and fresh material.
This is a free page. This page contains 198 words. This
biography contains 18,401 words (approx. 61 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Samuel Langhorne Clemens Access Pass.
