Mark Twain, short biography. Brief biography of Mark Twain, an outstanding American writer Additional material about the writer Mark Twain

Mark Twain (pseudonym; real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens) was an American writer. Born in 1835 in the village of Florida, Missouri, in the family of a judge. He spent his childhood in the town of Hannibal on the Missouri River. When his father died, he left school and began working as a typesetter for local newspapers. From the age of 18 to 22, he wandered around the country, then became a pilot on the Mississippi. In 1861, Twain went to the Far West, where he was a prospector in the silver mines of Nevada and a gold digger in California. At the same time, he tried himself as a newspaper reporter in Virginia City, where he published a number of humorous essays and stories. In 1865, he went by steamer to Europe and Palestine, sending humorous reports from the road. Twain's story based on the folklore story "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras" (1865) was widely known. Having visited France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Crimea and the Holy Land, he returned to the USA. In 1869, he published a collection of travel essays, Simpletons Abroad, which was a huge success.

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 even more. In 1876 he published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and as the book was a huge success, in 1885 he published a sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Between these two novels, Twain released another autobiographical book, Life on the Mississippi (1883).

Throughout his life, Twain was occupied with the problem of the Middle Ages. The hierarchical society of the past seemed to him grotesque. In 1882 he published The Prince and the Pauper, and in 1889 saw the light of the parody novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
In the early 90s. A difficult time has come in the writer's life. The collapse of his publishing company (1894) forced Twain to work hard, to undertake an annual trip around the world (1895) with public lectures. Another blow was dealt by the death of his daughter. Many of the pages written by Twain in the last two decades of his life are saturated with a sense of bitterness. He died in 1910 in Rudding, Connecticut.

APHORISMS BY MARK TWAIN

• Kindness is what the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
  If you only speak the truth, you don't need to remember anything.
  No person is able to understand what true love is until they have been married for a quarter of a century.
  Once in a lifetime, happiness knocks on everyone's door, but often this one sits in a nearby tavern and does not hear the knock.
  The peach was once a bitter almond, and the cauliflower is a common, later-graduated cabbage.
  Not many of us can endure happiness - I mean, the happiness of our neighbor.
  There is no greater vulgarity than excessive sophistication.
  Truth is our most precious possession. Let's take good care of her.
  Man was created on the last day of creation, when God was already tired.
  Man is the only animal that blushes or, under certain circumstances, should blush.
  People who have their own grief know how to comfort others.
  Peace, happiness, brotherhood of people - that's what we need in this world!
  Wrinkles should only indicate places where smiles used to be.
  A true friend is with you when you're wrong. When you are right, everyone will be with you.
  Noise proves nothing. A hen, after laying an egg, often cackles as if she had laid a small planet.
  If you notice that you are on the side of the majority, this is a sure sign that it is time to change.
  Avoid those who try to undermine your belief in the possibility of achieving something significant in life. This feature is characteristic of small souls.
  Each person, like the moon, has his unlit side, which he does not show to anyone.
  There are many funny things in the world; among other things, the white man's conviction that he is less of a savage than all other savages.
  Let's live in such a way that even the undertaker mourns our death.
  When in doubt, speak the truth.
  Adam was a happy man: when something funny came into his head, he could be sure that he was not repeating other people's witticisms.
  Adam was a man: he desired the apple from the tree of paradise, not because it was an apple, but because it was forbidden.
  Most writers regard truth as their most valuable asset, which is why they use it so sparingly.
  A cat once seated on a hot stove will no longer sit on a hot stove. And cold too.
  The best way to cheer up is to cheer up someone else.

MARK TWAIN

"Good friends, good books and a sleeping conscience - this is the ideal life"

On June 2, 1897, the New York Journal refuted rumors about the death of the writer Mark Twain, who, after seeing the obituary, sent a telegram to the editor: "Reports of my death are somewhat exaggerated." By this time, he had lost his children, began to sink into depression, but did not lose the sense of humor inherent in him and made him famous.
Mark Twain - the first, according to contemporaries, a truly American writer, orator and inventor of an elastic band that did not allow trousers to fall

“God created man because he was disappointed in the monkey. After that, he abandoned further experiments.

Mark Twain, or as his real name was Samuel Clemens, was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida (Missouri, USA) in a poor large family (pictured is the house where the writer was born). His father died in 1847 leaving many debts, so the children had to start working early. Twain's older brother Orion began publishing a newspaper, and the future writer worked as a compositor in it, less often he wrote short articles himself. But he was more attracted to the work of a pilot, so he soon went to the Mississippi River, where he worked until 1861, until the Civil War began. In search of a new occupation, Twain joined the Freemasons in the Polar Star Lodge No. 79 in St. Louis

"I never let my schoolwork interfere with my education"
Twain briefly fought in the Civil War on the side of the militia, but in 1861 he left for the west, where his brother was offered the position of secretary to the governor of the Nevada Territory. It was in the west that Twain formed as a writer, and besides, he amassed considerable capital, becoming a miner, and began to mine silver. But in order to do this all the time, Twain was not patient enough, so he soon found a job as a correspondent for the Territorial Enterprise newspaper, where he first used the pseudonym "Mark Twain." And in 1864 he moved to San Francisco and began to write for several newspapers at the same time. His first success came in 1865 with the publication of his short story "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras", which was called "the finest work of humorous literature produced in America up to this point."

“First of all, facts are needed, and only then they can be distorted”
Mark Twain always insisted on the non-literary origin of his pseudonym, allegedly he had taken it in his youth from the terms of river navigation. When he was a pilot's mate on the Mississippi, the cry "mark twain" (English mark twain, literally - "mark deuce") meant that the minimum depth suitable for the passage of river vessels had been reached. However, an article was published in the Mark Twain Journal in September 2013 offering a new explanation for its origin. In Vanity Fair for 1861 (that is, two years before Mark Twain first used his pseudonym), the authors found Artemus Ward's humorous story "The North Star" about three sailors who decide to abandon the compass because of its "commitment to the north ”, - the sailors are Mr. Dense Forest, Lee Shpigat and Mark Twain. The editor-in-chief of the Mark Twain Journal claimed that they did manage to catch Twain: his love for the humorous department of Vanity Fair was known for a long time, during his first stand-up performances, Twain read Ward's works, so there can be no talk of a coincidence
Photographed from left to right: David Grey, Mark Twain and George Alfred Townsend

“The people are divided into patriots and traitors, and no one is able to distinguish one from the other”
While in Hawaii in 1866, Twain wrote letters about his adventures. When he returned from his trip, the Alta California newspaper suggested that he tour the state, lecturing based on letters. The lectures were a resounding success, and Twain toured the entire state, entertaining the public and collecting a dollar from each listener. In 1869, his book The Simpletons Abroad was published, based on his travels in Europe and the Middle East. It was distributed by subscription and gained immense popularity. In 1883 he published a book of sharp satire Life on the Mississippi, in which he criticized politicians. But Twain's novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) are considered the greatest contribution to literature.

“First God created man, then he created woman. Then God felt sorry for the man, and he gave him tobacco.
Mark Twain joked that he never learned to smoke, but simply asked for a light as soon as he was born. Friends and relatives of the writer said that he constantly smoked, while working in his room there was such a thick smoke that Twain himself was almost invisible

“When my wife and I disagree, we usually do what she wants. The wife calls it a compromise."
In 1870, Twain married Olivia Langdon (pictured in the center). They were introduced by her brother Charles three years before their marriage. All this time, the lovers communicated by sending letters to each other. When Twain first proposed to Olivia, she refused, but after a while she changed her mind. In November 1870, Twain and Olivia had a son, but he was premature and very weak and died a year and a half later. By that time, the family lived in Connecticut, was very respected in literary circles. In 1872, a daughter, Olivia Susan, was born. She died at the age of 25, and in 2010, a manuscript of an unpublished story by Mark Twain dedicated to her was put up for auction at Sotheby`s in New York. In 1874, Clara was born (pictured) - the only child of the writer, who lived to old age. In 1880, Twain's youngest daughter, Jane, was born; she died shortly before her 30th birthday.

"There is no more pathetic sight than a man explaining his joke"
Twain was an excellent speaker, lectured, loved anecdotes and humorous stories. He devoted a lot of time to searching for young talents, helped them, printed in his publishing house, which he acquired in 1884. In addition, he adored billiards and could spend whole evenings playing. He was also a prominent figure in the American Anti-Imperial League opposed to the American annexation of the Philippines. In addition, he actively supported education, organized educational programs, especially for African Americans and talented people with disabilities.

Mark Twain loved technology and inventions, but as a real businessman, he was interested not so much in technical progress itself as in the money that inventions brought. The writer himself has three patents. In 1871, he patented an elastic band to keep trousers from falling off; a year later - an album with pieces of sticky tape on the pages for sticking clippings and in 1885 - an intellectual board game that helps memorize the dates of historical events. The scrapbook was the most successful commercially, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars.
In the photo: Mark Twain and mathematician John Lewis

Mark Twain was friends with Nikola Tesla, met with Thomas Edison. Carried away by technology, he did not miss a single important invention. Of course, Twain could not get past the invention of James Page. In those days, the texts of books and newspapers were typed in printing houses by hand. Page's typing machine (pictured) greatly accelerated this process. After the first meeting with the inventor in 1880, the writer bought shares of Farnham Typesetter, where James Page worked, for $2,000, and after a while, having seen the prototype in action, for another $3,000. He was confident of success and counted these $5,000 The most profitable investment of your life. In 1885, Page asked Twain, who had by then become the main sponsor of his invention, $30,000 for further improvements. Two years later, the money ran out, and James Page was still not ready to put his car into production. By 1888, Twain's total investment had reached $80,000, and Page kept repeating over and over that he would be ready for testing in a couple of weeks. On January 5, 1889, the typesetting machine finally started working, but quickly broke down. Mark Twain gave $4,000 a month to Page's apparatus for another year, and only in 1891 stopped throwing money into this bottomless pit. James Page died in poverty in a poor people's shelter, and Twain was on the verge of bankruptcy. For 11 years, he spent $ 150,000 ($ 4 million in current equivalent) on Page's typesetting machine.

"The only difference between a taxman and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin"
Mark Twain came to the conclusion that you should refrain from trading in securities in two cases - if you do not have funds and if you have them. He closed the house in Hartford and first went with his family to Europe, and then went on a world lecture tour. It turned out to be surprisingly successful, which allowed him to pay off creditors in full by January 1898, which, by the way, he was not obliged to do when he declared himself bankrupt.
In the photo: Mark Twain with his daughter Clara and her friend Miss Marie Nicole

In addition to Page's typesetting machine, Mark Twain was badly let down by Charles L. Webster & Company (Charles Webster was his niece's husband and publishing director), which he opened in 1884 and which went bankrupt ten years later. The very first book published by Twain - "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" - was a great success. Even more money was brought by the memoirs of former US President General Ulysses Grant. Mark Twain persuaded Grant to publish his memoirs from him, promising 70% of the profits. As a result, General Grant earned more than $ 8 million in the current equivalent. Twain also did not lose money, he received about $ 4 million. Mark Twain also had to blame himself for the bankruptcy of the publishing house. In full confidence that Americans love biographical literature, he published a biography of Pope Leo XIII, but failed to sell even 200 copies.

Mark Twain was one of the founders of collective novels. The idea at the beginning of the 20th century came to the mind of the famous writer William Dean Howells. He came up with the idea of ​​inviting popular authors to write a novel together about how a simple engagement completely changes the lives of two families - each author had to compose a chapter on behalf of his character, while the authorship of specific chapters was not disclosed. Elizabeth Jordan, a journalist, suffragist, editor of the first Sinclair Lewis novels, who worked at Harper's Bazaar from 1900 to 1913, took on the project. She was the first to attract Henry James (her then lover) as an author - Mark Twain agreed to participate after him and a dozen other popular writers. The enterprise turned out to be painful: the authors suddenly refused, were late with the delivery of texts and demanded more fees than their colleagues. parts were published in one book, withstood several reprints. “Not a book, but a mess,” Jordan herself said about her, but the beginning of the tradition was laid.
In the photo: Mark Twain and writer Dorothy Quick

Writer William Faulkner: “Huck Finn comes close to the Great American Novel, and Mark Twain comes close to the great American novelist, but Twain never wrote novels. We proceed from the fact that the novel has established rules, and his work is too loose - a lot of material, a set of events "
Today, Twain's novels "Tom Sawyer" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are not very favored in America, they are expelled from one state after another. At first, the book was considered asocial: Tom Sawyer and especially Huck Finn are naughty boys, and therefore they cannot teach children anything good. Представители же афроамериканских организаций Америки подсчитали, что на первых 35 страницах приключений Гека Финна слово «ниггер» употребляется 39 раз. Twain himself treated censorship with irony, saying that it was perhaps the best advertisement for his books. However, he listened to the opinion of his family and did not publish works that, in the opinion of the household, could offend the religious feelings of people. For example, The Mysterious Stranger remained unpublished until 1916. And Twain's most controversial work, which caused talk and condemnation, was a humorous lecture in a Parisian club, published under the title Reflections on the Science of Onanism. The essay was published only in 1943 in a limited edition.

“I'm not afraid to disappear. Before I was born, I was gone for billions and billions of years, and I did not suffer from it at all.
The older Twain got, the more depressed he became. The main reason was the death of his children and wife Olivia in 1904, a friend of Henry Rogers in 1909 who literally saved Twain from financial ruin. In addition, he was worried that his popularity as a writer had significantly decreased. However, he did not lose his sense of humor. Evidence of this was his response to an erroneous obituary in the New York Journal. In 1897, he sent a letter to the editor in which he wrote: "The rumors of my death are somewhat exaggerated." He died 13 years later, on April 21, 1910 from angina pectoris.

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 spread 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”, “The United Lynching States”, “The Tsar's Monologue”, “King Leopold's Monologue in defense of his domination 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

Mark Twain (eng. Mark Twain, pseudonym, real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens - Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 1835-1910) - an outstanding American writer, satirist, journalist and lecturer. At the peak of his career, he was probably the most popular figure in America. William Faulkner wrote that he was "the first truly American writer, and since then we have all been his heirs", and Ernest Hemingway wrote that "all modern American literature came out of one book by Mark Twain called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ". Of the Russian writers, Maxim Gorky and Alexander Kuprin spoke especially warmly about Mark Twain.

Clemens claimed that the pseudonym "Mark Twain" (Eng. Mark Twain) was taken by him in his youth from the terms of river navigation. Then he was a pilot's assistant on the Mississippi, and the term "mark twain" was the minimum depth suitable for the passage of river vessels (this is 2 fathoms, 365.76 cm). However, there is an opinion that in reality this pseudonym was remembered by Clemens from the time of his fun days in the West. They said “Mark Twain!” when, after drinking a double whiskey, they did not want to pay immediately, but asked the bartender to write it down on the account. Which of the variants of the origin of the pseudonym is correct is unknown. In addition to "Mark Twain", Clemens signed once in 1896 as "Mr. Louis de Conte" (fr. Sieur Louis de Conte).

Sam Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, USA. He was the third of four surviving children of John and Jane Clemens. When Sam was still a child, 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, leaving many debts. The eldest son, Orion, soon began publishing a newspaper, and Sam began to contribute as much as he could as a printer and, occasionally, as a writer of articles. Some of the newspaper's liveliest and most controversial articles had just come from the pen of a younger brother, usually when Orion was away. Sam himself also occasionally traveled to St. Louis and New York.

But the call of the Mississippi River eventually drew Clemens to a career 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 (he colorfully described this experience in 1885), Clemens left the war for the west in July 1861. Then his brother Orion was offered the position of secretary to the governor of Nevada. 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". 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."

In the spring of 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, invited Twain to tour the state, giving exciting 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 Alta California correspondent for the New York Tribune, Twain travels on the Quaker City steamer to Europe. In August, he also visited Odessa, Yalta and Sevastopol (in the "Odessa Herald" of August 24, the "Address" of American tourists written by Twain is placed). Letters written by him on a trip to Europe were sent and printed in a newspaper. And upon his return, these letters formed the basis of the book "Simples Abroad". The book was published 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 even Australia.

In 1870, at the height of the success of The Stupid 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 politics, this is especially noticeable in the collection of short stories Life on the Mississippi, written in 1883.

Twain's greatest contribution to American and world literature is the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Many consider it generally the best literary work ever created in the United States. Also very popular are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Life on the Mississippi, a collection of true stories. Mark Twain began his career with humorous couplets, and ended with terrible and almost vulgar chronicles of human vanity, hypocrisy and even murder.

Twain was an excellent orator. He helped create and popularize American literature as such, with its distinctive themes and colorful, offbeat language. 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 that brought many modern technologies to Arthurian England. You had to have a good understanding of science to create such a plot. And later, Mark Twain even patented his own invention - improved braces for pants.

Two other well-known hobbies of Mark Twain were playing billiards and smoking pipes. Visitors to Twain's home sometimes said that there was such tobacco smoke in his office that Twain himself could no longer be seen.

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

However, the success of Mark Twain 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 have been greatly 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 the 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. The sudden death of Rogers in 1909 deeply shocked Twain. Although Mark Twain repeatedly publicly thanked Rogers for saving him from financial ruin, it became clear that their friendship was mutually beneficial. Apparently, Twain significantly influenced the mitigation of the tough temper of the oil magnate, who had the nickname "Cerberus Rogers." After the death of Rogers, his papers showed that friendship with the famous writer made a real philanthropist and philanthropist out of the ruthless miser. During his friendship with Twain, Rogers began to actively support education, organizing educational programs, especially for African Americans and talented people with disabilities.

Twain himself died on April 21, 1910 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.

In the city of Hannibal, Missouri, the house in which Sam Clemens played as a boy, and the caves that he explored as a child, and which were later described in the famous Adventures of Tom Sawyer, have been preserved, tourists now come there. Mark Twain's home in Hartford has been turned into his personal museum and declared a National Historic Site in the United States.

Already from his first steps, Twain was not deprived of the attention of either readers or critics. The volume of critical literature devoted to Twain is enormous. "Twenian" represents a special independent trend in the history of American studies. And although the researchers of his work have done significant analytical and publishing work, the most famous American writer is still not fully understood.

Mark Twain lived at a turning point in the national history of the country, when its entire appearance was changing dramatically and rapidly. The beginning of Twain's work coincided with the Civil War (1861-1865) - a key event in the life of the United States, which was called the second American Revolution. As a result of the collapse of slavery, broad opportunities opened up for the capitalist development of the country. The pace of industrial production accelerated, and the influx of emigrants to the United States increased. The structure of the American economy was changing; the first monopolies and trusts appeared. Twain witnessed the first strikes, the birth of influential political parties that expressed the interests of both industrial workers and farmers. At the end of the 19th century, Twain was among those who condemned the Spanish-American war, which was openly aggressive. Before his eyes, the economic power of the country was strengthening, its scientific potential was growing.

Twain's life experience was exceptionally rich, unique in its own way. This found a diverse reflection in his books, in which there is a pronounced autobiographical beginning. This life experience was one of the decisive factors that determined the writer's constant interest in history and its lessons. Twain had a sense of life in its movement, internal dynamics.

Twain traveled constantly. More than ten times the writer crossed the Atlantic. He traveled all over Europe, becoming a witness to the most important socio-political conflicts and upheavals. It can be said that history was unfolding before his eyes.

An artist endowed with great power of imagination, Twain worked in various literary genres: he was a novelist, storyteller, publicist, and memoirist. A huge role in the creative heritage of Twain is occupied by documentaries. The writer actively performed in the genre of travel essay. He was an educator and humanist, an artist sensitive to all social and political events, which was confirmed by the publications of the writer's archive. For a long time, Twain was assigned the “image” of a comedian, a minion of fate, alien to the formulation of serious historical and philosophical problems.

Twain's literary school was the newspaper, and his favorite genres for a long time were satirical essays, comic sketches, humoresque, often using narrative moves and techniques typical of folklore. A special role in the development of Twain was played by the folklore created on the “frontier” (the border advancing to the West, beyond which lay territories where civilization had not yet arrived). The "frontier" in Mark Twain's childhood was Hannibal, at the time of his youth - Nevada and California, where he became famous as an outstanding journalist and coryphaeus of humor.

Starting with the textbook story "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras" (1865), creative features were defined that persist in Twain's early essay books ("Simples Abroad", 1869, "Light", 1872, "Life on the Mississippi", 1883): proximity to the forms of a folklore anecdote, an abundance of vivid everyday details that create a picture of reality with its contrasts and paradoxes, a feeling of powerful, inexhaustible energy of life, humor, understood as “the ability to make people laugh while maintaining full seriousness”. Under the onslaught of humor, the writer believed, "nothing can resist." Embodied in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the philosophical tale The Prince and the Pauper (1882), Mark Twain's ideal is freedom from everything conditional and lifeless, organic democracy, faith in the rationality of history and in the spiritual powers of an ordinary person. The mockery of artificiality and decayed forms of relationships that would be swept away by progress corresponded to the mindset that prevailed in America at that time, ready to recognize Twain as its national genius.

However, Mark Twain's reputation began to change with the release of a book about Huck Finn, which contained tragic episodes in which young heroes discover the real everyday life of a backwater with its stupidity and self-interest, the problem of moral choice arises in the face of injustice, violence and racism.

Having moved in 1870 from California to Hartford, Mark Twain was constantly in contact with the world of industrialists and businessmen, in which, after his marriage, he himself became involved. The writer was imbued with an increasingly undisguised disgust for the "Gilded Age", as he called the then era of rapid economic growth, accompanied by rampant corruption and trampling on democratic principles. The novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), the short story "Coot Wilson" (1896), pamphlets and satirical stories of the same period speak of an increase in accusatory beginnings in Twain's prose, which gradually becomes the most implacable critic of American social institutions and the mass social psychology. Mark Twain's dominant metaphor was a hoax, growing to universal proportions: both the moral norms established in society, society itself, and spiritual values ​​turn out to be fakes, which in fact speak only of the self-delusion of a person who does not want to realize how insignificant and miserable he is in his aspirations. .

Twain's increasing misanthropy, of which the repeatedly remade "The Mysterious Stranger" remained a monument, was partly due to the fact that unsuccessful business ventures led him to bankruptcy in 1894, as a result of which he had to undertake exhausting trips to read his stories for the sake of money, and then a round-the-world tour, described in the book of essays Along the Equator (1897). This trip turned Mark Twain into a passionate opponent of imperialism and the colonial ambitions of America, which he sharply condemned in a series of pamphlets written in the early 1900s.

Not all of them were published: Twain's entourage sought to preserve in the public mind the image of an unshakable lover of life and a careless humorist, forcing him to hide especially angry pages even from his family, in particular the chapter of his autobiography, which he dictated to his secretary in the last years of his life. The mood of these years is conveyed by the epigraph to the book “Along the Equator”: “Everything human is sad. The secret source of humor is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven."

Mark Twain, during his lifetime, became something of a "major icon of American culture" and a "national monument." The critic Brander Matthews was the first to recognize him as a great writer in his voluminous preface to the collected works of Twain at Harper's in 1899. He ranked Twain on a par with Chaucer and Cervantes, Molière and Fielding, and declared that no other writer expressed such full of all the diversity of the American experience.

In the very first responses to Mark Twain's death in 1910, the writers Hamlin Garland and Booth Tarkington in the USA, Alexander Kuprin and Korney Chukovsky in Russia expressed the general opinion that he was the true embodiment of America. B. Tarkington wrote: “... when I think about the true United States, Mark Twain became part of this concept for me. For while he was a full citizen of the world, he was also the Soul of America." Garland, emphasizing that Twain "remained to the last American of the Midwest", called him "a representative of our literary democracy ... along with Walt Whitman."

Archibald Henderson put it this way in 1910: Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, "the two great interpreters and incarnations of America," represent "democracy's highest contribution to world literature." In the future, this idea will become a commonplace for many discussions about the place of Twain in US literature. Two years later, Albert B. Payne, Twain's literary executor and author of the most comprehensive biography of him, declared that Mark Twain is "the most characteristic American in his every thought, in every word, in every deed."

Paradoxically, such desperate antagonists as Van Wyck Brooks and Bernard De Voto agreed on this: one of the few points of agreement they had was the perception of Twain as a “national writer”. Brooks' famous book, The Torture of Mark Twain (1920), which argued that Twain had failed as a great satirist because his development had been shackled and held back by exposure to a rigid puritan environment, began by stating that Mark Twain "was undeniably the epitome of character." and features of modern America", "something of the archetype of the national character for a long era." But so did De Voto, who programmatically titled his book "Mark Twain's America" ​​(1932), he just had a different attitude towards the old America of the frontier. If Brooks saw spiritual poverty in it, Devoto found just fruitful creative impulses for literature. He called an entire chapter of this work "The American as an Artist" and argued that it was in Twain's work that "American life became great literature" because "he was more familiar than other writers with national experience in its most diverse manifestations." The best works of Twain, according to Devoto, were "born of America and this is their immortality. He wrote books in which the very essence of national life was expressed with undeniable truthfulness.

The greatest American writers of the 20th century recognized Twain as the founder of the national literary tradition. "The true father of American literature" and "the first truly American artist of royal blood" called Twain Henry Lewis Mencken in 1913. This opinion was shared to varying degrees by Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Thomas Wolfe, Waldo Frank and others. Two great writers of the word, two antagonists, as you know, not inclined to agree with each other on most issues, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner agreed that the real American literature was born from the work of Mark Twain. Hemingway stated this in 1935, Faulkner twenty years later. A similar convergence can be noted in two more antipodes, in two great poets: Twain's novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" admired both Thomas S. Eliot, a native of Missouri, who moved to England and became a British subject, and Wystan Hugh Auden, an Englishman who took root in United States. Eliot in 1950 and Auden in 1953 declared Twain's hero to be the embodiment of the national character.

Since then, this opinion has become self-evident. One need only take any history of American literature, any collection of critical works on Twain, to be convinced of this. In the 1984 anniversary collection of works on Twain's main novel, his characters - Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the Connecticut Yankee and Dupe Wilson - and a hundred years after their creation are perceived as "symbols of a new nation, its rudeness, immaturity and moral uncertainty."

The culmination in the study of Mark Twain in his homeland was probably the jubilee year 1985, when it was 150 years since his birth and 100 years since the publication of his main novel. By this time, a very extensive and diverse literature about Twain had already accumulated, so meticulous bibliographers calculated that in a hundred years about 600 articles and books about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn alone appeared. It would seem that after this the flow of publications should subside at least for a while, as happened with other figures and anniversaries, but over the past twenty years it has not only not dried up, but even increased and, I must say, very impressively, so that in terms of the number of written - more than a hundred books dedicated to Twain - these two decades can argue with the three quarters of a century that have passed since the death of the writer. The fact is that American literary criticism in the second half of the 20th century, having adopted the tradition of meticulousness and fundamentalism of German science of the century before last, added to this its own enterprise and acquired a completely industrial character. Now it is the most powerful and massive, the most branched and specialized, and, finally, the most technically equipped and advanced literary criticism in the entire history of this field of activity. It has developed a variety of areas and layers - from textual criticism to literary theory. Of course, this could not but affect the study of the main national writer of the United States.

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.