Mark Twain: The Great American Novelist

If I could only read the works of one novelist in my lifetime, there is no doubt I would choose Mark Twain. His books, in addition to being sources of pure entertainment, are also some of the greatest sources of satire and humor to be found in literary history.

Early Years

Considering his humble upbringing, no one ever would have guessed that Twain would go on to become a celebrated novelist. Born on November 30, 1835 in Missouri with the birth name Samuel Langhorne Clemens, he was the sixth of seven children. After his father died of an illness in 1847, Twain became a printer’s apprentice, and later worked as a printer from the ages of 18 to 22. He then returned to Missouri and became a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. His experiences in Missouri were surely inspirational, for his home state and the Mississippi River would be featured prominently in his famous novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Success as Humorist and Satirist

Twain’s career as a writer began with many low-profile newspaper submissions. It wasn’t until his short story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” was published in the New York Saturday Press in1865 that he rose to national prominence. This story highlights Twain’s great ability as a humorist.

Building on this success, Twain began work on his wonderful travel book The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress. To gather material, Twain departed for the Holy Land by ship in 1867, and stopped in several Mediterranean countries along the way. This work is enjoyable as a straight travel story, but more importantly, it showcases Twain’s talent as a satirist. He doesn’t hold back from targeting revered institutions, like religion.

The Innocents Abroad proved to be extremely popular, and made Twain something of an author for the common man. It sold 69,500 copies in the first year, an astounding number, and was even sold door-to-door. This success was important for the whole country, because it revealed to the average person Twain’s genius as a novelist.

Masterpieces

Twain’s most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, were published in 1876 and 1885 respectively. These books draw heavily on his early life in Missouri, and both use the fictional town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Twain’s former home of Hannibal, Missouri.

While Tom Sawyer is remembered fondly, it is Huckleberry Finn that is widely considered Twain’s greatest work. Indeed, Ernest Hemingway once remarked “All modern literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn,” and the book is often considered one of the “great American novels.”

Huck Finn is another example of Twain’s expertise at satire, and he skewers such subjects as Southern society, hypocrisy, and racism. Notably, it was one of the first stories to accurately depict dialogue. That is, instead of having the characters speak “proper” English, their speech is true to the prevailing accents of the time. This adds an element of realism absent from most books of the era, and popularized the form.

Conclusion

Sadly, Twain’s genius as a writer often did not translate into smart life decisions. He wasted much of his fortune on ill-advised investments, and spiraled into a deep depression after two of his three daughters and his wife died. He died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910.

Despite these personal tragedies, Twain should be remembered for his incredible–and even revolutionary–writing achievements. After all, he was a master of satire and wit, a gifted story teller, and wrote in a style that made novels more accessible to the average person. There have been many great novelists, but Mark Twain may very well have been the greatest of them all.

Sources:

Andreas Teuber, “Mark Twain Biography,” Brandeis University.

The Regents of the University of California, “Europe and the Holy Land,” Berkeley Library.

Thirteen/WNET New York, “The American Novel. Literary Timeline. Novels,” PBS.


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