Brief biography of Mark Twain, an outstanding American writer. Brief biography of mark twain Message about mark twain

American writer, journalist Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), known worldwide as Mark Twain, was born on November 30, 1835 in the small village of Florida (Missouri) in the family of a small merchant. He was the sixth child in a family of seven children.

In 1839, the Clemens family moved to the town of Hannibal in the same state where the future writer spent his childhood. In March 1847, the father died of pneumonia, leaving many debts, and the children were forced to take jobs. In 1848, Sam became an apprentice compositor for the weekly newspaper The Missouri Courier, published in Hannibal, and three years later moved to the Western Union (later the Hannibal Journal), which was published by his older brother, Orion Clemens. The first literary and journalistic works of the future writer were published in this newspaper.

In May 1852, in the Boston magazine "Carpet Bag" was published his essay "The dandy scares the squatter."

In 1853 1857. Samuel Clemens traveled the country, visiting first St. Louis, then the eastern states and Washington. He worked as a compositor in St. Louis, New York and Philadelphia, then in Keokuk (Iowa) and Cincinnati (Ohio).

In New York, he systematically visited the city library in the evenings, in books he looked for more extensive information than he received in a regular school.

In 1857, Sam became an apprentice pilot on a Mississippi steamer, and in April 1859 he received a pilot's license. He continued to work with the New Orleans newspapers True Delta and Crescent.

When the American Civil War began in 1861, Sam fought on the side of the southerners as part of the militia for two weeks. In July 1861, when his elder brother Orion was appointed assistant governor of Nevada Territory, Samuel left west with his brother as his personal secretary. In 1862, in Nevada, hoping to get rich, he went to the silver mines and worked as a prospector for almost a year. After that, he got a job at the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City, for which he wrote articles, stories, humorous essays, signing them with the pseudonym Mark Twain. Clemens claimed that the pseudonym ("mark twain" measure 2) was taken by him from the terms of river navigation, which was called the minimum depth suitable for the passage of river vessels.

In 1906, Twain began to dictate his autobiography (he dictated it in 1906-1908), large fragments of which were never combined into a single whole.

Having finished it, Mark Twain banned the publication of the manuscript earlier than one hundred years after his death, which expired in 2010. The Mark Twain Papers & Projects (MTPP) Foundation at the University of California plans to release the first of three volumes of Mark Twain's autobiography.

Mark Twain's work is varied. He left more than 25 volumes of works of various genres, from light sketches and feuilletons to historical novels.

Twain's greatest contributions to American and world literature are considered to be The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and a collection of real stories, Life on the Mississippi.

Of the stories published in the last years of his life, the most notable is "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg" (The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg), as well as sharp, accusatory pamphlets. Treatise "What is a man?" (What Is Man) digression into philosophy. The works of recent years are mostly unfinished. Mark Twain's last satirical work, The Mysterious Stranger, was published posthumously in 1916 from an unfinished manuscript.

Mark Twain took great pride in public recognition: he received an honorary Master of Arts (July 1888), and a Doctor of Fine Arts (October 1901) from Yale University, an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Missouri (June 1902); he especially appreciated the award in 1907 of a doctorate in belles-lettres from the University of Oxford.

Mark Twain was a member of the American Anti-Imperial League which protested the American annexation of the Philippines.

In the last years of his life, Mark Twain was in a deep depression, which began in 1896, when his beloved daughter Susie died of meningitis, the depression intensified when his wife Olivia died in 1904, and on December 24, 1909 in Redding (Connecticut ) daughter Jean died of an attack of epilepsy.

Twain's financial situation also shook: 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.

In January 1910, Mark Twain went to Bermuda, where his illness began to worsen: he was tormented by angina attacks. April 24, 1910 Mark Twain died. He is buried in his wife's family cemetery in Elmira, New York.

Mark Twain's home in Hartford has been turned into his personal museum and declared a National Historic Site in the United States.

A crater on Mercury is named after Mark Twain.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources.

Mark Twain is an American writer, journalist and public figure. His work is full of sharp humor and satire, but he wrote many works in the genre of journalism and philosophical fiction.

Twain's novels and stories have been made into dozens of feature and animated films, and his The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is known all over the world.

So in front of you short biography of Mark Twain.

Biography of Twain

Mark Twain (real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was born November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri.

On the day of his birth, Halley's comet flew over the Earth. An interesting fact is that on the day of the writer's death, the same comet will again sweep over the Earth.

Mark Twain's father, John Marshall, worked as a judge, and his mother, Jane Lampton, was a housewife. However, despite the seemingly good position of the father, the family experienced serious financial difficulties.

In this regard, the Clemens family decided to move to the shipping city of Hannibal. It was this small town with its sights that left many pleasant and warm memories in the memory of the future writer, playing an important role in Twain's biography.

Childhood and youth

When Twain was 12 years old, his father died of pneumonia, leaving behind a lot of debt. For this reason, the children had to leave school and go to work.

Soon, Twain's older brother began publishing a newspaper. As a result, Mark began to work in it as a compositor. It was then that the young man began to sometimes write his own articles.

At the age of 18, Twain goes on a trip to the cities of America.

During this period of his biography, he awakens a special interest in. He spends a long time in libraries, reading different genres.

Over time, Mark Twain becomes a pilot on a ship. In his own words, he really liked this profession, which requires attention and knowledge of the fairway.

However, when the civil war broke out in 1861, private shipping fell into decline. As a result, the guy had to look for another job.

Creative biography of Twain

Over time, Mark Twain goes to the Wild West to mine precious metals. Despite the fact that the mines did not make him rich, during this period of his biography he managed to compose several witty stories.

In 1863, the writer signs his books for the first time with the pseudonym Mark Twain, taken from shipping practice. In the future, he will publish all his works only under this name, and it is with him that he will go down in the history of world literature.

The debut work in Twain's biography was The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras. This humorous story gained great popularity throughout America.

After that, Twain began to actively engage in writing. He was offered to cooperate with many authoritative publications that wanted them to publish the works of a rising literary star.

Soon, Mark discovers his gift as an orator, in connection with which he often begins to speak in different halls in front of a large audience. During this period of his biography, he meets his future wife Olivia, who was the sister of his friend.

Twain's works

At the peak of his popularity, Mark Twain wrote several books in the realism genre, which received many positive reviews from critics.

In 1876, the famous story "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" came out from under his pen, which brought him even greater popularity. Interestingly, it contained many autobiographical episodes from the life of the author.

After that, Mark Twain's new historical novel "The Prince and the Pauper" is published. In America, the book was a resounding success. Later, this work will be translated, thanks to which Soviet citizens will be able to appreciate this wonderful novel.

In the mid-1880s, Mark Twain opened his own publishing house, in which he printed the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Later, he publishes the best-selling book Reminiscences, which he dedicates to U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.

Twain's printing house lasted about 10 years until it completely went bankrupt due to the economic crisis that began in the United States.

It is worth noting that the last works of Twain, although they were quite popular, were no longer as successful as the first ones.

At this time, the peak of fame and recognition was observed in the biography of the writer: he was awarded doctoral degrees at various American universities and was honored in every possible way.

Friends of Mark Twain

Mark Twain was very interested. He had a friendly relationship with a famous inventor. Together with him, he could spend a long time in the laboratory, observing the research of the Lightning Lord.

Another close friend of Twain was the oil tycoon Henry Rogers. Interestingly, by nature, Henry was a very stingy person. However, after a long conversation with the writer, he changed dramatically.

The tycoon helped Mark Twain to get out of financial difficulties, and also began to donate substantial amounts of money to charity. Moreover, many of his donations became known only after the death of Rogers.

Death

In the last decade of his life, Mark Twain had to experience many tragedies associated with his family. He survived the death of three children and his wife Olivia, whom he loved very much.

Perhaps that is why in this period of his biography he finally lost faith in God and began to promote atheism. This was especially noticeable in the works "The Mysterious Stranger" and "Letter from the Earth", published after the death of the classic.

Samuel Clemens, known to the world as Mark Twain, died on April 21, 1910 at the age of 74.

The official cause of his death was angina pectoris. The writer was buried in the state of New York at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira.

Twain's photo

Below you can see the few photos of Mark Twain that even exist.

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The famous American writer Mark Twain (Samuel Lenghorne Clemens), who lived later than Whitman, had the opportunity to see with even greater clarity how far his homeland was from the ideal of true democracy. Despite this, Twain in most of his works remained a cheerful writer, a wonderful humorist.

Most of Twain's works are connected with the traditions of American folk humor, which gives his numerous stories a special charm, a bright national coloring. In the most insignificant phenomena, Twain notices the funny and talks about the most ordinary things inventively and witty. It shows the mercantile spirit of the bourgeoisie, the thirst for profit and the unscrupulousness of politicians. In the short story "How I Was Chosen for Governor" he ridicules the election campaign, which has turned into a competition of slanderers. In the story "Journalism in Tennessee" depicts the rude morals of the American press, the pursuit of sensation, the unprincipled struggle of competing newspapers. In such world-famous stories as “A Conversation with an Interviewer”, “My Watch”, “How I Edited an Agricultural Newspaper”, etc., the ingenuity of the author attracts, who creates situations that are unusually funny in their unexpectedness and absurdity.

Twain is a very observant writer, an excellent connoisseur of the psychology and life of ordinary people in America, the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois environment. On his life path he met people of various professions. The son of a provincial judge, he began working at the age of 12: as an apprentice in a printing house, as a typesetter, as a pilot on a steamboat, and, finally, as a journalist. From the memories of the steamer on which he sailed along the Mississippi, the writer's pseudonym arose: "Mark Twain" - a term used to measure the depth of the river.

Twain's childhood memories provided the material for two world-famous favorite children's books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Tom and his friends are looking for romantic adventures and freedom away from the bourgeois provincial town, from the boredom of religious Sunday schools, from the tedious instructions of school teachers. With the observation and subtle humor characteristic of Twain, the customs of the American provinces of the first half of the 19th century are outlined. And Tom's childhood experiences are revealed by the writer with touching love and penetration into the psychology of a teenager.

Tom Sawyer is one of the most charming characters in children's literature. Even if in his inventions and pranks he sometimes does not know the measure, but in serious, and sometimes dangerous alterations, Tom remains a faithful and courageous friend. Speaking at the trial as a witness, Tom was not afraid to take the old man accused of murder under protection and tell the truth about the real killer - the terrible and vengeful Indian Joe. He is by no means always truthful, but we believe much more in his affection for Aunt Polly, who replaces his mother, than in the love for her of Tom's "exemplary", but selfish, sometimes treacherous and prudent brother Sid.

When Mark Twain wrote the books about Tom and Huck, slavery had already been abolished in America. But the oppression of the Negroes and racial inequality remained, as they continue to exist today. Twain could not be indifferent to this shameful phenomenon of American life.

In the story about a little tramp, freedom-loving Huck Finn, his friend, a black slave, a runaway Negro Jim, is constantly next to him. They travel on a raft along the Mississippi River: Huck escaped from a rich widow who sheltered him, but tortured him with her annoying instructions, and Jim seeks to get to free states where there is no slavery.

Twain is not only a cheerful humorist, but also a brilliant satirist. His book A Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) exposes the feudal-monarchical survivals that still survive in some of the bourgeois countries of Europe. The writer, just like his hero, comes to the conclusion that only a revolution can give freedom to an oppressed person. And when the Russian revolution of 1905 took place, it met with warm sympathy from Twain.

Almost all children in our country know the most interesting story written by M. Twain - "The Prince and the Pauper" (1882). It tells about the fate of the little ragamuffin Tom Canty and the English Prince Edward. The action takes place in the 16th century. By pure chance, Tom becomes the heir to the throne for a while, and Prince Edward, instead of Tom, finds himself among the beggars. Then the little prince will learn the truth about the bitter fate of his people, about the cruel arbitrariness of kings, their ministers and officials. Gradually, the views and attitude to life of a child who was previously spoiled and did not know human grief are changing. And, returning again to his palace, Edward becomes a kind king who cares about the welfare of his people. And Tom Canty, although sometimes he got into ridiculous situations, not knowing court life, delights the reader: a beggar boy from the people, without realizing it, was often much wiser than all important and experienced ministers.

Many of Twain's works were not published in his homeland until recently. His statements about American "democracy" and colonial policy are too harsh.

Only recently did Twain's letters and diaries, his unfinished autobiography, pamphlets, etc., see the light of day. They tell that an honest artist, who passionately loved his people, experienced excruciating disappointments, seeing how democratic ideals were trampled in his country.

Ernest Hemingway once remarked that all American literature came from one book, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. According to Hemingway, this is the best literary work in America. First published in 1884, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel and Twain's masterpiece. But there are other amazingly interesting facts from his biography that are worthy of the attention of anyone who wants to consider himself an expert in history and literature.

Parents did not think that their son would survive

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, that was the writer's real name, was born two months prematurely, on November 30, in the tiny town of Florida, Missouri. He was sickly and fragile all his childhood until he was seven years old. Clemens was the sixth of seven children, of whom only three survived to adulthood. In 1839, Clemens' father John Marshall, a self-taught lawyer who also owned a shop, decided to move his family to Hannibal, Missouri, to improve his financial situation. Years later, his son will describe exactly Hannibal in his books about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, although there are no direct indications of the city in the texts. By the way, the financial situation of the family has not improved. When Samuel was eleven years old, his father died of pneumonia.

The writer did not receive a brilliant education

In 1848, a year after his father's death, Mark Twain took a full-time job as a printer's assistant for Hannibal's local newspaper. In 1851, he went to work as a typesetter in a newspaper owned by his older brother Orion, and began to compose short satirical notes for her himself. In 1853, seventeen-year-old Clemens left his hometown and worked for several years in the printing houses of New York, Philadelphia and Iowa.

His career as a river captain was linked to tragedy

In 1857, Clemens became an apprentice captain on a steamboat that sailed the Mississippi River. The following year, when he was assigned to a ship called the Pennsylvania, Clemens found work on board for his younger brother Henry. Clemens himself worked on the ship until June, and in the middle of the month there was a disaster - the ship exploded near Memphis. Among the dead was nineteen-year-old Henry. Clemens was killed by the death of his brother, but continued the work of captain. He worked on steamships until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, when commercial traffic stopped moving along the Mississippi. The writer's pseudonym is associated with a term that defines the safe depth for a steamer - the phrase that turned into a name denoted twelve feet of water.

Twain served in the Confederate forces

Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, the twenty-five-year-old Clemens joined the pro-Confederate militia. His family had one slave when Clemens was a child, but he did not adhere to the ideological views of the southerners. He enlisted in the army because of a desire to support his southern roots. His service was short. The division broke up two weeks later. A month later, Clemens left Missouri and left the war behind him. He traveled west with his brother Orion, who was given an important position in the state of Nevada. Once there, Clemens tried his hand at mining, but, failing to succeed, got a job as a reporter in Virginia, Nevada. Already in 1863 he began to use the pseudonym Mark Twain. Before that, he had used others, including the likes of Epaminondas Adrastus Blub and Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass. Clemens was a friend of Ulysses Grant and in 1885 published the memoirs of the former president. They became a bestseller and saved Grant's widow from the poverty that threatened her after the death of her husband, who invested his money in unsuccessful investments.

He became famous in California

In May 1864, Twain challenged a local newspaper rival to a duel, but before a fight could occur, he decided to leave for another state, apparently fearing arrest for violating dueling laws. He went to San Francisco where he found a job as a reporter. She quickly got tired of him, so Twain went on to wander further, to California. In those years, the state was engulfed in a gold rush. There Twain saw the competition of jumping frogs. When in 1865 he returned to San Francisco, his friend - a writer from New York - invited him to write a story for a book, of which he was the compiler. While Twain wrote his story, the book had already been published, but the publisher became interested in the story - it was dedicated to the same frogs - and sent it to New York, to the newspaper. The story became a real hit, it was published throughout the country.

Huckleberry Finn is inspired by a real person

The adventures of Huckleberry Finn unfold in the south, where the character travels along the Mississippi River with Jim, a slave who has escaped from the owner. Huckleberry Finn first appears in the Tom Sawyer novel published in 1876. The character was inspired by Tom Blankenship, a boy who was four years older than Twain when he lived in Hannibal. Blankenship's family was poor, and his father was considered the city's drunkard. In his autobiography, the writer says that he described his character exactly as Tom was - ignorant, untidy, always hungry, but at the same time with a very kind heart. It is unknown what happened to Blankenship when he grew up. There are rumors that he was a judge in Montana, but according to other versions, he died of cholera, or even ended up in prison for theft. The book about him has become highly controversial. Some states banned its publication and placement in libraries for unliterary language, not very intellectual plot and outright racism. Modern critics point out that in fact the plot is an obvious accusation of racism.

The writer was a bad entrepreneur

After becoming a successful writer, Twain continually invested in unsuccessful ventures and went bankrupt. Interestingly, when he got the opportunity to invest in the development of the phone, he turned it down. The developer, Alexander Graham Bell, later became famous throughout the world. Mark Twain himself was a good inventor, for example, he invented adhesive sheets for notepads. In 1891, he decided to move to Europe to lower his living expenses and help his wife, who was having health problems. Things were going badly there too, so Twain had to go on tour with performances to pay off his debts. This helped him cope with bankruptcy and repay all his debts within a few years. However, he never succeeded in accumulating a large fortune - he never knew how to successfully invest his writing fees.

Twain has no descendants

In 1870, Mark Twain married Olivia Langdon, who came from an abolitionist family in Elmira, New York. The couple was introduced by Olivia's younger brother, whom Twain met while traveling through Europe and the Holy Land. The couple had four children. The son died in infancy, and two daughters could not live to be thirty years old. Olivia Langdon herself died in 1904 at the age of fifty-eight. Her husband, whose health deteriorated markedly every year after his wife's death, lived until 1910 and died at the age of seventy-four in Redding, Connecticut. Only Clara remained, who died in 1962 at the age of eighty-eight. She had an only daughter named Nina Gabrilovich. Nina had no children of her own, and she herself died in 1966. Thus, it turns out that there are no direct descendants of Samuel Clemens left in the world.

Years of life: from 11/30/1835 to 04/21/1910

Outstanding American writer, satirist, journalist and public figure. He is best known for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Real name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

early years

Born in the small town of Florida (Missouri, USA) in the family of merchant John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens. He was the sixth child in a family of seven children.

When Mark Twain was 4 years old, his family moved to the town of Hannibal, a river port on the Mississippi River. Subsequently, this city will serve as the prototype of the town of St. Petersburg in the famous novels "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". At this time, Missouri was a slave state, therefore already at that time Mark Twain was faced with slavery, which he would later describe and condemn in his works.

In March 1847, when Mark Twain was 11, his father died of pneumonia. The following year, he starts working as an assistant in a printing house. Since 1851, he has been typing and editing articles and humorous essays for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his brother Orion.

The Orion newspaper soon closed, the brothers' paths diverged for many years, only to cross again by the end of the Civil War in Nevada.

At the age of 18, he left Hannibal and worked at a print shop in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis and other cities. He was self-educated, spending a lot of time in the library, thus gaining as much knowledge as he would have received from a regular school.

At the age of 22, Twain moved to New Orleans. On the way to New Orleans, Mark Twain traveled by steamboat. Then he had a dream to become the captain of the ship. Twain meticulously taught the route of the Mississippi River for two years, until he received a diploma as a ship captain in 1859. Samuel got his younger brother to work with him. But Henry died on June 21, 1858, when the steamer he was working on exploded. Mark Twain believed that he was primarily to blame for the death of his brother and guilt did not leave him throughout his life until his death. However, he continued to work on the river and worked until the Civil War broke out and shipping on the Mississippi ceased. The war forced him to change his profession, although Twain regretted it for the rest of his life.

Samuel Clemens had to become a Confederate soldier. But since he has been accustomed to being free since childhood, in two weeks he deserts from the ranks of the army of the inhabitants of the South and directs his way west, to his brother in Nevada. It was only rumored that silver and gold had been found in the wild prairies of this state. Here Samuel worked for a year in a silver mine. In parallel with this, he wrote humorous stories for the newspaper "Territorial Enterprise" in Virginia City and in August 1862 received an invitation to become its employee. This is where Samuel Clemens had to look for a pseudonym for himself. Clemens claimed that the pseudonym "Mark Twain" was taken from the terms of river navigation, which was called the minimum depth suitable for the passage of river vessels. This is how the writer Mark Twain appeared in the spaces of America, who in the future managed to win world recognition with his work.

Creation

For several years, Mark Twain wandered from newspaper to newspaper as a reporter and feuilletonist. In addition, he earned extra money by publicly reading his humorous stories. Twain was an excellent orator. As a correspondent for Alta California, he spent five months on a Mediterranean cruise on the steamer Quaker City, during which he collected material for his first book, Simpletons Abroad. Her appearance in 1869 aroused some interest on the part of the reading public because of the combination of good southern humor and satire, rare for those years. Thus, the literary debut of Mark Twain took place. In addition, in February 1870, he married the sister of his friend Ch. Langdon, whom he met during the cruise - Olivia.

Mark Twain's next successful book, co-authored with Charles Warner, was The Gilded Age. The work, on the one hand, is not very successful, because the styles of the co-authors were seriously different, but on the other hand, it became to the taste of readers so much that the time of the reign of President Grant was dubbed its name.

And in 1876, a new book by Mark Twain saw the world, which not only cemented him as the greatest American writer, but forever made his name in the history of world literature. It was the famous "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer". In fact, the writer did not have to invent anything. He remembered his childhood in Hannibal and his life during those years. And now on the pages of the book appeared the place of St. Petersburg, in which one can easily distinguish the features of Hannibal, as well as the features of many other small settlements scattered along the banks of the Mississippi. And in Tom Sawyer, you can easily recognize the young Samuel Clemens, who really did not like school and was already smoking at the age of 9.

The success of the book exceeded all expectations. The book, filled with simple humor and written in accessible language, appealed to a wide mass of ordinary Americans. Indeed, in Tom, many recognized themselves in a distant and carefree childhood. This recognition of readers Twain secured the next book, also not designed for the refined minds of literary critics. The story "The Prince and the Pauper", which was published in 1882, takes readers to England during the Tudor era. Exciting adventures are combined in this story with the dream of a simple American to get rich. The casual reader liked it.

The historical theme interested the writer. In the preface to his new novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Twain wrote: "If anyone is inclined to condemn our modern civilization, well, it cannot be prevented, but it is good sometimes to draw a comparison between it and what was done in the world earlier, and this should reassure and inspire hope.

Until 1884, Mark Twain was already a well-known writer, and also became a successful businessman. He set up a publishing firm nominally headed by C. L. Webster, the husband of his niece. One of the first books published by his own publishing house was his Adventures of Huckleberry Fin. The work, which, according to critics, was the best in the work of Mark Twain, was conceived as a continuation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. However, it turned out to be much more complex and multi-layered. It was reflected that the writer had been creating it for almost 10 years. And these years were filled with a constant search for the best literary form, polishing the language and deep reflections. In this book, for the first time in American literature, Twain used the spoken language of the American hinterland. Once it was allowed to be used only in farce and satire on the customs of the common people.

Among other books published by the Mark Twain publishing house can be called "Memoirs" of the eighteenth President of the United States, V.S. Grant. They became a bestseller and brought the desired material well-being to the Samuel Clemens family.

The publishing company of Mark Twain successfully existed until the well-known economic crisis of 1893-1894. The writer's business could not withstand the severe blow and went bankrupt. Back in 1891, Mark Twain was forced to move to Europe in order to save money. From time to time he comes to the United States, trying to improve his financial situation. After the ruin, he does not recognize himself as bankrupt for a long time. In the end, he manages to negotiate with creditors to defer the payment of debts. During this time, Mark Twain wrote several works, among which his most serious historical prose is "Personal Memoirs of Joan of Arc by Sieur Louis de Comte, Her Page and Secretary" (1896), as well as "Coot Wilson" (1894), " Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) and Tom Sawyer Detective (1896). But none of them could achieve the success that accompanied Twain's previous books.

Later years

The star of the writer inexorably rolled into decline. At the end of the 19th century, a collection of works by Mark Twain began to be published in the United States, thereby elevating him to the category of classics of bygone days. However, the fierce boy who sat inside the elderly, already completely gray-haired, Samuel Clemens did not think to give up. Mark Twain entered the twentieth century with a sharp satire on the powers that be. The writer marked the stormy revolutionary beginning of the century with works designed to expose untruth and injustice: “To a Man Walking in Darkness”, “United Lynching States”, “The Tsar's Monologue”, “King Leopold's Monologue in defense of his dominance in the Congo”. But in the minds of Americans, Twain remained a classic of "light" literature.

In 1901, he received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Yale University. The following year, an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Missouri. He was very proud of these titles. For a man who had left school at 12, the recognition of his talent by pundits of famous universities flattered him.

In 1906, Twain acquired a personal secretary, who became A. B. Payne. The young man expressed his desire to write a book about the writer's life. However, Mark Twain has already sat down to write his autobiography several times. As a result, the writer begins to dictate the story of his life to Payne. A year later, he was again awarded a degree. He receives an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Oxford.

At this time, he is already seriously ill, and most of his family members die one after another - he survived the loss of three of his four children, his beloved wife Olivia also died. But even though he was in a deep depression, he could still joke. The writer is tormented by severe attacks of angina pectoris. Ultimately, the heart gives out and on April 24, 1910, at the age of 74, Mark Twain dies.

His last work, the satirical story The Mysterious Stranger, was published posthumously in 1916 from an unfinished manuscript.

Information about the works:

Mark Twain was born in 1835, the day when Halley's comet flew near the Earth, and died in 1910, the day of its next appearance near the earth's orbit. The writer foresaw his death back in 1909: "I came into this world with Halley's comet, and next year I will leave it with it."

Mark Twain foresaw the death of his brother Henry - he dreamed about it a month before. After this incident, he became interested in parapsychology. He subsequently became a member of the Society for Psychical Research.

At first, Mark Twain signed with another pseudonym - Josh. This signature was followed by notes about the life of miners who flooded into Nevada from all over America when the Silver Rush began there.

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 describes a time travel that brought many modern technologies to Arthurian England.

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.

A crater on Mercury is named after Mark Twain.

Bibliography

Screen adaptations of works, theatrical performances

1907 Tom Sawyer
1909 The Prince and the Pauper
1911 Science
1915 The Prince and the Pauper
1917 Tom Sawyer
1918 Huck and Tom
1920 Huckleberry Finn
1920 The Prince and the Pauper
1930 Tom Sawyer
1931 Huckleberry Finn
1936 Tom Sawyer (Kyiv Film Studio)
1937 The Prince and the Pauper
1938 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
1938 Tom Sawyer, detective
1939 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
1943 The Prince and the Pauper
1947 Tom Sawyer
1954 Million Pound Bank Note
1968 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
1972 The Prince and the Pauper
1973 Completely lost
1973 Tom Sawyer
1978 The Prince and the Pauper
1981 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
1989 Philip Traum
1993 Hack and the King of Hearts
1994 Eva's Magical Adventure
1994 Million for Juan
1994 Charlie's Ghost: Coronado's Secret
1995 Tom and Huck
2000 Tom Sawyer