Mark Twain
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Mark Twain (1835-1910) was the pen name of Samuel Clemens, one of the most popular American novelists and humorists of the late 19th century, who achieved great popularity and critical acclaim. While his most famous book is Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), his authorial output was prodigious: 30 books, thousands of newspaper and magazine pieces, 50 personal notebooks, and some 600 other literary manuscripts--fragments, chapters, drafts, sketches--that he never published. The latter are being edited and published by the University of California.[1] He wrote some 50,000 letters, of which 11,000 have been preserved, and 2300 are now online.[2]
Bibliography
Biographies
- Kaplan, Justin. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography (1966), a major scholarly biography that paints a dark portrait of despair and pessimism
- Kaplan, Fred. The Singular Mark Twain. New York: Doubleday, 2003. 726 pp.
- Kirk, Connie Ann. Mark Twain: A Biography. Greenwood, 2004. 140 pp.
- Powers, Ron. Mark Twain: A Life. Free Press, 2005. 736 pp., a major scholarly biography
Career studies
- Coulombe, Joseph L. Mark Twain and the American West. U. of Missouri Press, 2003. 181 pp.
- Ober, K. Patrick. Mark Twain and Medicine: "Any Mummery Will Cure." U. of Missouri Press, 2003. 362 pp.
Literary studies
- Budd, Louis J. Mark Twain, Social Philosopher (1962; 2nd ed. 2001)
- Griffith, Clark. Achilles and the Tortoise, Mark Twain's Fictions (2000)
- Knoper, Randall. Acting Naturally: Mark Twain in the Culture of Performance (1995) complete text online free
- Messent, Peter. The Short Works of Mark Twain, A Critical Study (2001)
- Wieck, Carl F. Refiguring Huckleberry Finn (2001)
- Ziff, Larzer. Mark Twain. Oxford U. Press, 2004. 126 pp.
Images of Mark Twain
- Ishihara, Tsuyoshi. Mark Twain in Japan: The Cultural Reception of an American Icon. U. of Missouri Pr., 2005. 178 pp.
Video
- Ken Burns, PBS documentary "Mark Twain" (2001)
Primary sources
- Mark Twain's Letters, 1853–1880 (6 vol 1888-2002), 2300 letters online edition, free
Critical editions
- online in 2008: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Roughing It and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
- Oxford University Press issued a 29-volume edition of Twain's published writings in 1996.
notes
- ↑ See Ron Powers, "Keeping up with Mark Twain," Smithsonian 2003 34(6): 74-78, 80, 82. Issn: 0037-7333 Fulltext: Ebsco
- ↑ see Mark Twain's Letters, 1853–1880 (6 volume print edition 1888-2002), 2300 letters online edition