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.

Ron Powers, a Pulitzer Prize-winning and Emmy Award-winning writer and critic, has studied and written about Mark Twain for many years. He is the author of ten books, including Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain, and the coauthor of two, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Flags of Our Fathers. He lives in Middlebury, Vermont.

Contents

Prologue

1: "Something at Once Awful and Sublime" (1835-39)

2: "The White Town, Drowsing..." (1839)

3: Of Words and the Word (1840-42)

4: The Hannibal Decade (1843-53)

5: Apprentice (1848-51)

6: Rambler (1852-53)

7: "So Far from Home..." (1853-56)

8: The Language of Water (1856-58)

9: Ranger (1858-61)

10: Washoe (1861-62)

11: A Journalistic Counterculture (1862-63)

12: "Mark Twain -- More of Him" (1863)

13: Code Duello (1863-64)

14: A Villainous Backwoods Sketch (1864-65)

15: "...And I Began to Talk" (1865-66)

16: On the Road (1866-67)

17: Back East (1867)

18: "move -- move -- Move!" (1867)

19: Pilgrims and Sinners (1867)

20: In the Thrall of Mother Bear (October 1867-New Year's Day 1868)

21: "A Work Humorously Inclined..." (February-July 1868)

22: The Girl in the Miniature (July 1868-October 1868)

23: American Vandal (October-December 1868)

24: "Quite Worthy of the Best" (1869)

25: Fairyland (1870)

26: "My Hated Nom de Plume..." (1871)

27: Sociable Jimmy (1871-72)

28: The Lion of London (1872-73)

29: Gilded (1873-74)

30: Quarry Farm and Nook Farm (1874-75)

31: The Man in the Moon (1875)

32: "It Befell Yt One Did Breake Wind..." (1876)

33: God's Fool (1877)

34: Abroad Again (1878-79)

35: "A Personal Hatred for Humbug" (1880)

36: "A Powerful Good Time" (1881-82)

37: "All Right, Then..." (1882-83)

38: The American Novel (1884-85)

39: Roll Over, Lord Byron (1886-87)

40: "I Have Fed So Full on Sorrows..." (1887-90)

41: "We Are Skimming Along Like Paupers..." (1891-June 1893)

42: Savior (1893-94)

43: Thunder-Stroke (1895-96)

44: Exile and Return (1896-1900)

45: Sitting in Darkness (1900-1905)

Chapter the Last

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index