Books on Life of Mark Twain one of Greatest American Writers

Books on Life of Mark Twain one of Greatest American Writers

Books in list (16)


Title: Mark Twain

Author(s): Twain, Mark
ISBN 13: 9781446506813

Title: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1

Author(s): Twain, Mark
ISBN 13: 9780520272255

Title: Twain: A Life of Genius

Samuel Langhorne Clemens—better known by his pen name of Mark Twain—towers over all other American writers. But who was the man behind the novels? In this revealing, compact biography, Alexander Kennedy examines Twain’s extraordinary life, expertly separating from fact from fiction, biography from legend. Here we see how Twain rose from an impoverished boyhood on the Mississippi to become one of the nation’s most famous men, using the very material of that impoverished boyhood to propel his rise. But Twain’s life also had more than its share of tragedy, and his story is also one of failure, bankruptcy, and grievous loss. Mark Twain: His Life and Legacy guides the reader through Twain’s many rises and falls, showing how this master author spun both his highs and lows into literary gold, changing the face of world literature forever. "Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest." - Mark Twain Buy Now to Discover: Twain’s unsuccessful careers as a steamboat pilot and prospector. Twain’s brief service with the Confederate Army. The duel that forced Twain to flee to California. The controversies around Twain’s magnum opus, Huckleberry Finn. The unlikely friendship between Twain and Ulysses S. Grant. Twain’s disastrous business ventures. Countless witticisms and insights in the great humorist’s own words.
Author(s): Alexander Kennedy
ISBN 13: 9781535252942
Pages: 100

Title: Mark Twain: A Life

Samuel Clemens, the man known as Mark Twain, invented the American voice and became one of our greatest celebrities. His life mirrored his country's, as he grew from a Mississippi River boyhood in the days of the frontier, to a Wild-West journalist during the Gold Rush, to become the king of the eastern establishment and a global celebrity as America became an international power. Along the way, Mark Twain keenly observed the characters and voices that filled the growing country, and left us our first authentically American literature. Ron Powers's magnificent biography offers the definitive life of the founding father of our culture.

Author(s): Ron Powers
ISBN 13: 9780743249010
Pages: 736

Title: Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations

Includes hundreds of Twain's most memorable quips and comments on life, love, history, culture, travel, and diverse other topics, among them "He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty"; "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please"; and "More than one cigar at a time is excessive smoking."
Author(s): Mark Twain
ISBN 13: 9780486406640
Pages: 64

Title: Mark Twain's Letters from Hawaii

So Samuel Langhorne Clemens made his excuse for late copy to the Sacramento Union, the newspaper that was underwriting his 1866 trip. If the young reporter's excuse makes perfect sense to you, join the thousands of Island lovers who have delighted in Twain's efforts when he finally did put pen to paper.
Author(s): Mark Twain
ISBN 13: 9780824802882
Pages: 320

Title: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2

Author(s): Mark Twain
ISBN 13: 9780520272781

Title: Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands

Author(s): Mark Twain, Day A. Grove
ISBN 13: 9780935180930

Title: The Autobiography of Mark Twain

Author(s): Mark Twain
ISBN 13: 9780060955427

Title: Following the Equator

Author(s): Mark Twain
ISBN 13: 9780486261133

Title: My Autobiography: "Chapters" from the North American Review

Famed author's plain-spoken words — recorded as character sketches, essays, diary entries, letters and more — recall his boisterous boyhood in Hannibal, Missouri, life as a riverboat pilot, as a young adult in rough Nevada mining towns, years spent as an author, plus somber passages noting the death of his wife and their three children.
Author(s): Mark Twain
ISBN 13: 9780486408989
Pages: 288

Title: Is Shakespeare Dead? from My Autobiography

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
Author(s): Mark Twain
ISBN 13: 9781505617535
Pages: 30

Title: Mark Twain

Ray Comfort searches through volumes of Twain’s writings to develop a comprehensive answer to this profound writer of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and a man who suffered much.
Author(s): Ray Comfort
ISBN 13: 9780890518458
Pages: 160

Title: Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography


Mark Twain, the American comic genius who portrayed, named, and in part exemplified America's "Gilded Age," comes alive -- a presence felt, an artist understood -- in Justin Kaplan's extraordinary biography.

With brilliant immediacy, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain brings to life a towering literary figure whose dual persona symbolized the emerging American conflict between down-to-earth morality and freewheeling ambition. As Mark Twain, he was the Mississippi riverboat pilot, the satirist with a fiery hatred of pretension, and the author of such classics as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. As Mr. Clemens, he was the star who married an heiress, built a palatial estate, threw away fortunes on harebrained financial schemes, and lived the extravagant life that Mark Twain despised. Kaplan effectively portrays the triumphant-tragic man whose achievements and failures, laughter and anger, reflect a crucial generation in our past as well as his own dark, divided, and remarkably contemporary spirit.

The book begins as the thirty-one-year-old Mark Twain, carrying bottled within himself the experience of his boyhood in Hannibal and his coming-of-age on the Mississippi and on Nevada's silver-rush frontier, quits San Francisco and the old elemental America of the open spaces. He is heading east for the burgeoning new urban America of commerce, invention, finance, and status, where he is destined to marry well, hobnob with the rich and influential, throw away fortunes on tragically alluring schemes...and produce literary works that fulfill and go beyond the vocation he has already acknowledged: "to excite the laughter of God's creatures."

He is heard, seen, made palpable. The texture of his marriage with Olivia Langdon, the protean presence of Mark Twain on the lecture platform, his friendships and enmities -- virtually all his closest relationships partook of both -- spring to life. His writing and publishing experience is organically re-created. His endurance in the face of personal tragedy, his unrivaled charm, his compulsion to quarrel, his humility and his vanity are evoked and felt. His wit rings through the book.

"Honest poverty is a gem that even a King might be proud to call his own, but I wish to sell out. I have sported that kind of jewelry long enough." Thus the young Mark Twain, on the eve of world fame, spoke his disgust at a money-centered society in that blatantly philistine voice that he chose for his most savage satirical declarations. But all his life -- racked by his own ambivalences -- he was to embrace the values of that society.

Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain brilliantly conveys this towering literary figure who was himself a symbol of the peculiarly American conflict between moral scrutiny and the drive to succeed. Mr. Clemens lived the Gilded Life that Mark Twain despised. The merging and fragmenting of these and other identities, as the biography unfolds, results in a magnificent projection of the whole man; the great comic spirit; and the exuberant, tragic human being, who, his friend William Dean Howells said, was "sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature."

"...Twain lives in these pages as full and alive as any man could." --New York Times

Author(s): Justin Kaplan
ISBN 13: 9780671748074
Pages: 432

 


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