Mark Twain (Lives and Legacies) PDF
Preview Mark Twain (Lives and Legacies)
Mark Twain Larzer Ziff OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS M A R K T W A I N L I V E S A N D L E G A C I E S Larzer Ziff M A R K T W A I N David S. Reynolds W A L T W H I T M A N Craig T. Raine T. S . E L I O T M A R K T W A I N Larzer Ziff 2004 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright © 2004 by Larzer Ziff Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ziff, Larzer, 1927– Mark Twain / Larzer Ziff. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–19–517019–9 1. Twain, Mark, 1835–1910. 2. Authors, American—19th century—Biography. I. Title. PS1331.Z54 2004 818'.409—dc22 2004003034 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper C O N T E N T S One C E L E B R I T Y 1 Two T O U R I S T 3 0 Three N O V E L I S T 5 8 Four H U M O R I S T 8 9 N O T E S 1 1 7 B I B L I O G R A P H I C A L N O T E 1 2 1 I N D E X 1 2 3 Samuel L. Clemens, Esq., Doctor of Letters (Oxford, 1907). Courtesy, The Mark Twain Project, The Bancroft Library M A R K T W A I N This page intentionally left blank One C E L E B R I T Y SAM CLEMENS BEGAN THE DECADE OF THE 1850S AS A HELPER IN THE office of his brother Orion’s newspaper, the Western Union. He was fifteen and had been out of school since he was eleven. He ended the decade as an unemployed steamboat pilot, the Civil War having closed down commerce between North and South on the great highway of the Mississippi River. During that same decade American literary culture came of age with the appearance of works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Walt Whitman that have since been regarded as classics of the national literature. The prophet of that renaissance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, continued throughout the 1850s to serve as its intellectual leader, carrying his message to lecture halls as well as publishing it in essays. “Our days of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to a close,” he had announced in 1837. “The millions that around us are rushing into life, cannot C E L E B R I T Y 1
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