An American writer who won millions of children's and adult hearts with his unique ironic creativity is Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens). He was not just a writer, but also a journalist and public figure.

Born November 30, 1835 in Missouri. At the age of 4, he and his family moved to the small town of Hannibal. In his famous work “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” the writer describes the city of his childhood, which left an indelible impression.

Samuel began working at the age of 12, due to the death of his father and a large number of debts. Helping his brother work in a newspaper publication, he tries his hand at writing articles. This is where writing talent is revealed.

Afterwards, Samuel gets a job as a pilot and sails around the country. He liked the profession of a sailor so much that he decided to devote his life to it. However, living conditions dictate their own rules. He decides to start mining silver. This occupation did not bring him money. Samuel comes back to work at the newspaper. It was here that he took the pseudonym "Mark Twain". In 1864 Mark moves to San Francisco, where his writing “genius” awakens.

Brought him fame humorous story in 1865 "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras." The story was popular, read in every town and settlement. The work received the status of the best in the humorous genre. Mark Twain wrote it when he traveled for a long time to Europe and Palestine. During his life, a writer will travel more than 1000 kilometers.

Next come the books “Innocents Abroad”, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, which gained worldwide fame. “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” is considered a classic of the genre, one of the best works of world literature.

In their latest works Mark Twain tries to show America as a country where cruelty, violence, and injustice are encountered at every step. He was especially concerned about the problem of racism. The writer is no longer perceived as a humorist or satirist. Some of his works were prohibited from being read or distributed among the population; in them he most vividly describes acute social problems.

In the 90s of the XIX century. Mark Twain had a hard time. His publishing house closed. To earn money, he began to travel around the world, read his works and lectures. Complex life situation, affected his works. Written in 1916 The story “The Mysterious Stranger” contains the bitterness, sarcasm, and pessimism of a disappointed person.

Died brilliant writer 04/21/1910

Mark Twain's stories, novels, and novels make us reread them again and again. Reading them you can feel the atmosphere of that time, the attitude of people towards each other. Through his books, the author conveys to us notes of compassion and love for people. Thanks to the uniqueness of his works, Mark Twain is my favorite writer.

Option 2

Almost every child in childhood or adolescence read a book about Tom Sawyer and his friend Huckleberry Fin. The creator of these interesting and funny stories was the American writer Mark Twain. It was he who made a great contribution to American and world literature. At the same time, he wrote not only for children, but also for adults.

In fact, Mark Twain is a pseudonym. The writer's birth name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Another name came to him in his youth with a literal translation: “mark deuce.” This is what Twain shouted from the side of the ship when he worked there before he wrote. Samuel was born in Florida, USA in 1835. His family did not have pure American roots. Mark's genes are a mixture of Scottish, Irish and English roots. The boy began writing after the death of his father, when his older brother began publishing a newspaper and needed help with interesting articles, but this did not last long. Sam went to work on a ship as a pilot. The Civil War did not allow Twain to work on a ship all his life, and then he had to go through a lot. It was these years of experience that formed the main idea of ​​his second book.

In 1867, Mark Twain went to big Adventure, which I also visited in Russia. At this time, he wrote letters and sent them to his home newspaper. Later, his first book, entitled “Simps Abroad,” was compiled from them. After the great success of this book, Mark Twain got married. Peak creative career The writer was the release of the novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” In addition, his works such as “The Prince and the Pauper” and “A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur” are also highly valued. Literary scholars noticed that the author began to write in a light humorous style, and ended his career with deeply satirical works.

Mark Twain became a famous and recognized writer during his lifetime. In adulthood, he became an excellent speaker and devoted his life to the search for young talent. In addition to literature, he was fascinated by science; his close friend was Nicola Testa. The last years of his life cannot be called happy and successful. His wife and children died, and his publishing company went bankrupt. Several of his books were given away to plagiarists, which led him into deep depression. But even shortly before his death, Mark Twain did not stop joking. The writer associated his birth with Halley's comet, and when it came again he expected his death. This is what happened in April 1910. The great American writer died of angina.

Twain's work

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) - American writer and public figure. He wrote his works in the following styles - humor, satire, philosophical fiction and others.

The future writer was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, in a large family. He had 4 brothers and 2 sisters. Unfortunately, two older brothers and a sister died in childhood. At the age of 4, the boy and his family moved to live in the city of Hannibal, which many years later he would describe in his work “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

At the age of 12, a talented young man loses his father due to illness. The entire burden of responsibility for the family falls on the shoulders of his older brother Orion, who around this time opens a printing house and publishes newspapers. Samuel tried to help him with his work, so he held the position of a typist in the publishing house and sometimes wrote articles for the newspaper himself.

The aspiring writer loves the river very much, so he leaves the publishing house. Having got a job as a pilot on a steamship, he decides to connect his life with the river. But, thanks to the current circumstances, he fails to realize his plans. Therefore, Samuel has to mine valuable metals. Over time, this activity also did not end as successfully as we would have liked. Therefore, the talented writer begins to collaborate with a local newspaper and publishes his works under the fictitious name Mark Twain.

Having moved to San Francisco in 1864, Mark created his works for several publishing houses at once. A year later, he received his first success as a writer for the collection of stories “The Famous Jumping Frog from Calaveras.”

From that time on, Mark Twain began to travel a lot, during which he wrote books that enjoyed great recognition and interest among readers. At the same time, he often gives talks in the USA and England.

In 1870, Mark married Olivia Langdon and lived with her for more than 20 happy years.

Over time, the writer writes and publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Life on the Mississippi. These works immediately appealed to the great public and made him one of the most well-known writers of that time.

In his later works, the writer categorically condemned racism, spoke negatively about American rulers, and talked about the injustice and cruelty reigning on the streets of the country. Therefore, during his lifetime, the writer had to face harsh criticism of many of his works, written in the style of sharp satire. Most of the books were not allowed to be published.

In the 1890s, Mark Twain lost a lot a large amount money thanks to the fact that his publishing house went bankrupt, and brazen plagiarists published several of his books under their own name. At that time, tycoon Henry Rogers came to the writer’s aid and was able to improve Mark’s not very good financial situation. Over time, they became close friends.

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>Biographies of writers and poets

Brief biography of Mark Twain

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) is an outstanding American writer and public figure. Born November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. In his work, Mark Twain used many genres, from satire to philosophical fiction. However, in all these genres he invariably remained a humanist. At the peak of his career, he was considered perhaps the most outstanding American, and his comrades spoke of him as the first real writer in the country. Of the Russian writers, Kuprin and Gorky spoke especially warmly about him. The writer’s most popular books are “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

Mark Twain was born to John and Jane Clemens in a small town in Missouri. The family then moved to the city of Hannibal, whose inhabitants he later described in his works. When the father of the family died, the eldest son began publishing the newspaper and Samuel made his unsustainable contribution to it. With the outbreak of the Civil War, the young man went to work as a pilot on a steamship. In July 1861, he moved away from the war to the west, where silver was being mined at that time. Not finding himself in the career of a prospector, he again took up journalism. He got a job at a newspaper in Virginia and began writing under the pseudonym Mark Twain.

Success as a writer came to him in the late 1860s, when, after traveling to Europe, he published the book “Simps Abroad.” In 1870, Mark Twain married and moved to Hartford. During the same period, he began to lecture and write satire, criticizing American society. In 1876, a novel was published about the adventures of a boy named Tom Sawyer. The continuation of this novel was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Mark Twain's most famous historical novel is The Prince and the Pauper (1881).

In addition to literature, Mark Twain was fascinated by science. He was friends with Nikola Tesla and often visited his laboratory. In the last years of his life, the writer was deeply depressed: his literary success gradually faded away, his financial situation worsened, three of his four children died, and his beloved wife Olivia Langdon also passed away. While depressed, he still tried to joke sometimes. Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910 from angina.

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 his peak, he was probably the most popular figure in America. William Faulkner wrote that he was “the first truly American writer, and we have all been his heirs ever since,” and Ernest Hemingway wrote that “all modern American literature has come from 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” was taken by him in his youth from river navigation terms. Then he was an assistant pilot on the Mississippi, and the term “Mark Twain” was used to describe the minimum depth suitable for the passage of river vessels (this is 2 fathoms, 365.76 cm). However, it is believed that in reality this pseudonym was remembered by Clemens from the days of his fun days in the West. They said “Mark Twain!” when, after drinking double whiskey, they didn’t want to pay right away, but asked the bartender to write it down on the bill. Which of the origins of the pseudonym is correct is unknown. In addition to “Mark Twain,” Clemens signed himself once in 1896 as “Mr. Louis de Conte” (French: 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 (also 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's 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 an article writer. Some of the newspaper's liveliest and most controversial articles came from the pen of the 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 been engaged in 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 west in July 1861. Then his brother Orion was offered the position of secretary to the governor of Nevada. Sam and Orion traveled for two weeks across the prairies in a stagecoach 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 for silver. He had to live for a long time in a camp with other miners - a lifestyle 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 there, in Virginia. In this newspaper he first used the pseudonym "Mark Twain". And in 1864 he moved to San Francisco, California, where he began writing for several newspapers at the same time. In 1865, the first person came to Twain literary success, his humorous story "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras" was reprinted throughout the country and called "the best piece of humorous literature produced in America up to this point."

In the spring of 1866, Twain was sent by the Sacramento Union newspaper to Hawaii. As the journey progressed, he had to write letters about his adventures. Upon returning 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 fascinating lectures. The lectures immediately became wildly popular, and Twain traveled throughout the state, entertaining the public and collecting a dollar from each listener.

Twain achieved his first success as a writer 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 traveled on the Quaker City to Europe. In August, he also visited Odessa, Yalta and Sevastopol (the “Odessa Bulletin” of August 24 contains the “Address” of American tourists, written by Twain). Letters written by him while traveling around Europe were sent and published in the newspaper. And upon their return, these letters formed the basis of the book “Simplices 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 “Simps Abroad.” During his writing career, Twain traveled throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and even Australia.

In 1870, at the height of his success from Innocents Abroad, Twain married Olivia Langdon and moved to Buffalo, New York. From there he moved to Hartford, Connecticut. During this period he often lectured in the USA and England. He then began to write biting satire, sharply criticizing American society and politicians, most notably in the collection of short stories Life on the Mississippi, written in 1883.

Twain's greatest contribution to American and world literature is considered to be the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Many consider this to be 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 the collection real stories"Life on the Mississippi" Mark Twain began his career with humorous couplets and ended with macabre and almost vulgar chronicles of human vanity, hypocrisy and even murder.

Twain was an excellent speaker. He helped create and popularize American literature as such, with its distinctive themes and vibrant, unusual language. Having gained recognition and fame, Mark Twain devoted a lot of time to searching for young literary talents and helping them break through, using his influence and the publishing company he acquired.

Twain was passionate about 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, as a result of which many modern technologies were introduced to England during the time of King Arthur. You had to have a good understanding of science to create such a plot. And later Mark Twain even patented his own invention - improved suspenders for pants.

Two more famous hobbies of Mark Twain were playing billiards and smoking a pipe. 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, in which about 600 people died, he wrote The Philippine Incident, but it was not published until 1924, 14 years after Twain's death.

However, Mark Twain's success gradually began to fade away. Before 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, “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Twain's financial situation also deteriorated: his publishing company went bankrupt; he invested a lot of money in a new model of printing press, which was never put into production; Plagiarists stole the rights to several of his books.

In 1893, Twain was introduced to oil magnate Henry Rogers, one of the directors of Standard Oil. Rogers helped Twain reorganize his financial affairs profitably, and they became close friends. Twain often visited Rogers, they drank and played poker. You could say that Twain even became a member of the family for the Rogers. Rogers' sudden death in 1909 deeply affected Twain. Although Mark Twain publicly thanked Rogers many times for saving him from financial ruin, it became clear that their friendship was mutually beneficial. Apparently, Twain had a significant influence on softening the tough temper of the oil tycoon, who had the nickname “Cerberus Rogers.” After Rogers' death, his papers showed that his friendship with famous writer made a real philanthropist and philanthropist out of a ruthless miser. During his friendship with Twain, Rogers became an active supporter of education, organizing educational programs, especially for African Americans and talented people with disabilities.

Twain himself died on April 21, 1910 from angina pectoris. A year before his death, he said: “I came in 1835 with Halley’s Comet, a year later it comes again, and I expect to leave with it.” And so it happened.

In the city of Hannibal, Missouri, the house where Sam Clemens played as a boy has been preserved, and the caves that he explored as a child, and which were later described in the famous “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” are now visited by tourists. Mark Twain's house in Hartford has been turned into his personal museum and declared a national historical treasure in the United States.

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. “Tweniana” represents a special independent direction in the history of American studies. And although significant analytical and publishing work has been done by researchers of his work, the most famous American writer still remains not fully studied.

Mark Twain lived at a turning point for national history country, when its entire appearance changed sharply and quickly. The beginning of Twain's work coincided with 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, wide 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, expressing 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 country’s economic power strengthened and its scientific potential grew.

Twain's life experience was extremely rich and unique in its own way. This is reflected in many ways in his books, which contain a pronounced autobiographical element. 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. The writer crossed the Atlantic more than ten times. He traveled throughout Europe, witnessing the most important socio-political conflicts and upheavals. You could say history was happening before his eyes.

Artist endowed enormous power fantasy, Twain created in various literary genres: was a novelist, master of short stories, publicist, memoirist. Documentary films play a huge role in Twain's creative heritage. The writer actively worked in the genre of travel writing. He was an educator and humanist, an artist who was sensitive to all social and political events, which was confirmed by publications from the writer’s archive. For a long time, Twain had the “image” of a humorist, a darling 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 remained the satirical essay, comic sketch, and humoresque, often using narrative moves and techniques typical of folklore. Special role Folklore created on the “frontier” (a border advancing to the West, beyond which lay territories where civilization had not yet arrived) played a role in Twain’s development. The “frontier” in Mark Twain’s childhood was Hannibal, in his youth it was Nevada and California, where he gained fame as an outstanding journalist and luminary of humor.

Starting with the textbook story “The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras” (1865), we decided creative features, preserved in Twain’s early essay books (“Innocents Abroad”, 1869, “Lightly”, 1872, “Life on the Mississippi”, 1883): closeness to the forms of folklore story-anecdote, an abundance of bright everyday details, creating 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 complete seriousness.” Under the onslaught of humor, the writer believed, “nothing can resist.” Incarnated in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and philosophical tale“The Prince and the Pauper” (1882) Mark Twain’s ideal is freedom from everything conventional and lifeless, organic democracy, faith in the rationality of history and in the spiritual powers of the ordinary person. The mockery of artificiality and dilapidated forms of relations that would be swept away by progress corresponded to the mood that prevailed in America at that time, which was ready to recognize Twain as its national genius.

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

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

Twain's increasing misanthropy, a monument to which remains his many reworkings of The Mysterious Stranger, was partly explained by the fact that unsuccessful business endeavors led him to bankruptcy in 1894, as a result of which he had to undertake grueling trips for the sake of money, reading his stories, 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 America's colonial ambitions, which he harshly denounced in a series of pamphlets written in the early 1900s.

Not all of them were published: Twain’s circle sought to preserve in the public consciousness the image of an unshakable lover of life and a carefree humorist, forcing him to hide especially angry pages even from his family, in particular the chapters of the autobiography that 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 hidden 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 published by Harper's in 1899. He put 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 first responses to Mark Twain's death in 1910, writers Hamlin Garland and Booth Tarkington in the United States and 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 a Midwestern American to the last,” 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, “those two great interpreters and embodiments of America,” represent “the highest contribution of democracy to the literature of the world.” In the future, this idea will become a commonplace in many discussions about Twain’s place in US literature. Two years later, Albert B. Payne, Twain's literary executor and the author of the most comprehensive biography of him, declared that Mark Twain was "a most characteristic American in 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.” Famous book Brooks' The Torture of Mark Twain (1920), which argued that Twain had failed as a great satirist, because his development was constrained and constrained by the influence of an inert Puritan environment, began with the statement that Mark Twain “was undoubtedly the embodiment of character and characteristics modern America", "something like an archetype national character over a long period of time." But De Voto also thought the same, programmatically calling his book “Mark Twain’s America” (1932), he just had a different attitude towards the old America of the frontier. If Brooks saw spiritual squalor in it, Devoto found 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 the national experience in its most varied manifestations.” Best works 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 unquestionable truthfulness.”

Major American writers of the 20th century recognized Twain as the founder of the national literary tradition. "True father American literature" and "the first to be genuine American artist"royal blood" called Twain Henry Lewis Mencken in 1913. This opinion was shared to one degree or another by Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Thomas Wolfe, Waldo Frank and others. Two great artists of words, two antagonists, as we know, not inclined to agree with each other on most issues, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner agreed that true American literature was born from the work of Mark Twain. Hemingway said 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” delighted both Thomas S. Eliot, a native of Missouri, who moved to England and became a British subject, and W. 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. It is enough to take any history of American literature, any collection of critical works about 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, Connecticut Yankee and Pimp Wilson - are still perceived a hundred years after their creation as "symbols of the new nation, its rudeness, immaturity and moral uncertainty."

The culmination of the study of Mark Twain in his homeland was probably the anniversary year of 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 varied literature about Twain had already accumulated, so meticulous bibliographers calculated that over a hundred years about 600 articles and books had appeared on “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” alone. It would seem that after this the flow of publications should at least temporarily subside, as happened with other figures and anniversaries, but over the past twenty years it not only has not dried up, but has even grown and, I must say, very impressively, so that in terms of the amount of writing - more than a hundred books dedicated to Twain - these two decades can rival the three quarters of a century that have passed since the writer’s death. 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 entrepreneurial spirit and acquired a completely industrial character. Now this is the most powerful and widespread, 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 the most developed various directions 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.

The works of Mark TwainAbstract on US literature

Completed by: student
Yuryeva Yu.A.
DGL -201
Checked:
Sidorova Inna Nikolaevna

Moscow 2010

Content
Introduction……………………………………………………………….3
Part 1. The works of Mark Twain……………………………………
Early years and further creativity……………………………….
Later years………………………………………………………..
Features of Mark Twain's humorous works……….
Interests and hobbies of the writer……………………………… ………
Part 2. Novel “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”………………………
Conclusion…………………………………………………… ……….
Bibliography………………………………… …………………

Introduction

“It’s wonderful that America was discovered, but it would be much more wonderful if
Columbus sailed by." This sarcastic maxim could have been uttered by a resident
European country, suffering today from the dominance of overseas "technological
culture", but it was expressed by "an American of Americans" Mark Twain, about whom
Hemingway wrote: “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”
This work presents a description of the work of Mark Twain, as well as the peculiarities of the nature of the writing of his works.
I believe that everyone should know the facts of the life and works of this great writer. The works of Mark Twain are still read today; the problems of these works are relevant in their own way.
This abstract consists of two parts.
The first part includes a description of the writer’s work and character traits, problems of his work.
The second part presents an analysis of Mark Twain's work "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"

The early years and further work of Mark Twain

A couple of years later, Sam continued his hunt for luck: in 1861 he left for Dalny
West, worked as a prospector in the Nevada silver mines and contributed to a local newspaper as a reporter; then he moved to California and became a gold miner, but did not leave his reporting work, immediately blazing a trail into Californian newspaper publications. In the humoresques of this period, Mark Twain mastered the techniques of folk (“wild”) humor, until finally his story on the folklore plot “The Famous Jumping Frog from Calaveras” (1865) appeared, which brought him his first fame.
In 1867, Mark Twain sailed on the Quaker City to Europe and Palestine. He
visited France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Crimea, sending to American
newspapers with their humorous reports. A year later, he published a book that included impressions from this trip - “Simps Abroad”; it was a resounding success. Critics wrote about the “triumphant entry of folk humor into great literature.” However, not only this determined its popularity - the book was permeated with the pride of a representative of the New World in front of the Old and faith in the special mission of his country against the backdrop of “servile” Europe with its historical “obscurantism.” It should be noted that the ridicule of “simpletons” at European antiquity and culture often sins of Yankee utilitarianism. Not only Europe, but also the Holy Scriptures suffered in this book. In the chapters on Palestine, polemicizing against traditional religious ideas, Mark Twain turns stories from Bible . This line in his work will continue throughout his life and will be expressed in militant atheism. After returning from Europe, Mark Twain met Olivia Langdon, the daughter of a large coal merchant, and decided to get married. The rich clan was hardly flattered
the prospect of having such a relative. However, the young writer, inspired
success of the first book, I achieved success here too. In 1870 the marriage was concluded, and
the young couple moved to Hartford (Connecticut). This union turned out to be happy both in family and creative terms. Among his wife's relatives, Mark Twain also found targets for his “poisonous” arrows. Thus, the hero of the satire “Letter from a Guardian Angel” was the coal merchant Andrew Langdon, a black businessman hiding behind hypocritical charity, to whom such far from related lines are addressed: “What is the readiness worth... of ten thousand noblest souls to give their lives for another - according to
compared to a gift of fifteen dollars from the most vile and stingy reptile that ever burdened the earth with its presence! " The story was published widely
some time after his death - in 1946.
In 1872, Mark Twain's second book was published - "The Tempered" (in the Russian translation "Lightly"), which included his autobiographical essays about working in the silver and gold mines of Nevada and California. In the stories about the lives of miners, which are also told from the perspective of a “simpleton,” black humor is intertwined with the epic nature of the narrative. Theodore Dreiser regarded this book as "a vivid picture of a fantastic and yet very real era of American history."
Indeed, at that time a new era for America began. Mark Twain wrote that when he was in the town of Hannibal, wealth was not the main meaning of life for Americans, and only the discovery of gold in California “gave rise to the passion for money that has come to dominate today.” His later story “The Man Who Corrupted Hedleyburg” (1899) is also devoted to the same topic - about how money corrupts entire cities.
Mark Twain mastered the great genre together with Ch.D. Warner, writing a joint novel
“The Gilded Age” (1873) is about the post-war period (from 1861 to 1865 there was a civil war between the Northern and Southern states) - a time of crazy money, grandiose projects and disappointed hopes.
And yet the small genre still remained the main one in the writer’s work. IN
In 1875, Mark Twain published the collection Old and New Sketches, which included stories
which became textbooks: “Journalism in Tennessee” (1869), “How I was Elected to
governors", "How I edited an agricultural newspaper" (1870), "Conversation with an interviewer" (1875), etc. They were written on behalf of a naive narrator who does not fully imagine (or rather, does not at all) the business he is taking on, which gives rise to the comedy of the situation.
Finally, in 1876, Mark Twain's first independent novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, appeared, bringing him worldwide fame. The writer did not hide the autobiographical roots of this work. In Tom Sawyer one can easily discern the “Protestant” nature of the writer himself, which manifested itself from childhood. If we try to characterize the main character in a few words, we can say: a violator of prohibitions and a “subversive” of traditions. American criticism saw in Tom Sawyer a “little businessman,” that is, the national type of Business American: Tom’s dreams of getting rich, the ability to profit from painting a fence, fraud with tickets in Sunday school...

It is curious that Mark Twain conceived this book as a criticism of American reality, but the romanticism of childhood impressions, poeticization of life, and good-natured humor gave it epic features. “In my opinion,” wrote Mark Twain, “a story for boys should be written in such a way that it can interest... and any grown man who has ever been a boy.” The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which was supposed to be a sequel to Tom Sawyer, took ten years to write. In this novel, gentle humor already develops into harsh satire, so it is no coincidence that the author began with a “Warning”: “Persons who try to find a motive in this story will be put on trial; persons who try to find a moral in it will be exiled; persons Those who try to find a plot in it will be shot." Huck, bored in the house of the virtuous widow who took him in, becomes a homeless tramp and sees the world in more realistic, contrasting colors than Tom. A young lumpen traveling with a black man and fighting for his freedom offended the American morals of the time. Soon after its publication (1885), the novel was removed from many libraries as “a worthless little book suitable only for the slums.” A century later, the same book was accused of... racism and humiliation of the dignity of the black population, and a certain school board member from Chicago even suggested burning it. The writer's unflagging interest in the European Middle Ages found expression in the famous story "The Prince and the Pauper" (1882). By that time, Mark Twain’s pride as a “free citizen of a free country” had transformed into a different feeling: he found the reasons for the stratification of American society into oppressors and oppressed - in the Middle Ages, where the ancestors of modern Americans came from. The allegorical story about how the royal scion and the ragamuffin switched places shows the conventionality of any social status and goes back to the proverbial wisdom that can be expressed by the Russian proverb: “Don’t swear off bag and prison.”
His novel “A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur” (1889) can also be attributed to the medieval cycle. This parody of medieval chivalric romances about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table gave science fiction writers of our century such an inexhaustible technique as time travel (a mechanic from Connecticut received a blow to the head, lost consciousness and woke up in the distant past next to the legendary Camelot).
In the early 1890s, the twenty-year Hartford period of Mark Twain's life, filled with creative success and family joys, unexpectedly ended
collapse. Back in 1884, the writer founded his own publishing company,
financed the inventor of a new printing press, but became increasingly bogged down in debt, and in 1894 the company finally went bankrupt. To improve matters, Mark Twain went on a trip around the world, giving lectures in Australia,
New Zealand, Ceylon, India and South Africa. After a hard trip it
A more severe blow came - Susie's beloved daughter died.
From the story "Simp Wilson" (about a ridiculed sage; 1894) in the works of Mark
Twain began a period that can be called a change of milestones. He was disappointed in
bourgeois democracy, noting in his notebook: “The majority is always wrong,”
rejected American patriotism, which, in his opinion, had poisoned the minds of many
his compatriots (“...the merchant spirit replaced morality, everyone became only a patriot of his own pocket,” wrote Mark Twain), lost faith in American progress and its special mission: “Sixty years ago, an “optimist” and a “fool” were not synonyms. Here is the greatest revolution, greater than science and technology have produced. Great changes have not occurred in sixty years since the creation of the world." Subjecting his “selfish, cowardly and hypocritical” contemporaries to fierce criticism, he admired the “thorny path” of Russian revolutionaries, as he reported in a letter to the populist revolutionary Stepnyak-Kravchinsky.
At the peak of his “revolutionary” emotions, he writes “Personal Memoirs of Jeanne
d "Arc" (1896) - about the courage of the French national heroine. He called this book his favorite work.
Since 1901, Mark Twain began publishing daring political pamphlets: “To the Man Sitting in Darkness,” “To My Missionary Critics,” “In Defense of General Funston,” in which he spoke out against American imperialist policies and the military. Then came “The Tsar’s Monologue” (a caustic satire on the Russian autocracy; 1905) and “The Monologue of King Leopold” (indignation at the Belgian colonial regime in the Congo), etc.
The “lyrical” hero of the late Mark Twain becomes Satan, most vividly represented in the story “The Mysterious Stranger” - into his mouth the writer put his evil satirical laughter at human seductions and his thoughts. This story can be considered Mark Twain's manifesto, completing his creative life.
Back in 1899, he wrote to his friend, the American writer W.D. Gowells that he intends to stop literary work for a living and take up his main book: “... in which I will not limit myself in anything, I will not be afraid that I will hurt the feelings of others, or take into account their prejudices ... in which I will express everything , what I think... frankly, without looking back..." Work on the story lasted until the end of my life, three versions of it were preserved. It was not published during her lifetime.
In general, devil mania was characteristic of the art of many countries at the turn of the century. The literary Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan, Antichrist (names of the devil) of the early 20th century trace their origins to Goethe’s Mephistopheles (“Faust”; 1831), and borrowed their literary “task” from him: “I am part of that force that eternally wants evil and always does good" (that is, he tells a person the impartial truth about himself). For example, Mikhail Bulgakov took these words as the epigraph to his famous novel “The Master and Margarita” about Woland (another name for the devil), and long before that, in 1902, Zinaida Gippius declared in verse: “I love the Devil for this, / What I see in him is my suffering."
Mark Twain began his “diabolism” back in the late 1860s, when he began
work on the story "Captain Stormfield's Journey to Paradise", where he ridiculed evil
religious feelings and Christian ideas about the “paradise”. The story was
completed several years before the writer's death and published (not completely) in 1907.

Later years
The writer's star was inexorably sliding towards decline. At the end of the 19th century, a collection of Mark Twain’s works began to be published in the United States, thereby elevating him to the category of classics of bygone days. However, the bitter boy who sat inside the elderly, already completely gray-haired Samuel Clemens did not think of giving 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 the Man Who Walks in Darkness,” “United Lynching States,” “Monologue of the Tsar,” “Monologue of King Leopold in Defense of His Dominion 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. Next year, an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Missouri. He was very proud of these titles. For a man who left school at the age of 12, the recognition of his talent by the 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 had 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 an academic degree. He receives an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Oxford University.
At this time, he was already seriously ill, and most of his family members were dying one after another - he experienced the loss of three of his four children, and his beloved wife Olivia also died. But even though he was deeply depressed, 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.

Features of Mark Twain's humorous works