An Interactive Biography of Mark Twain

by Charles River Editors

Includes video of the only known footage of Mark Twain, shot by Thomas Edison in 1909.
Includes pictures of Twain and important people, places, and events in his life.
*Includes a list of some of his most famous and colorful quotes.

Everyone has read about history’s most important people and events in dense textbooks and classrooms, but words can only say so much. In Charles River Editors’ Interactive Biography series, history comes to life in video and audio, allowing people to not only read history but truly experience it, through the eyes and ears of the people who were there.
While Halley’s Comet lit up Earth’s sky in 1835, America’s biggest literature star was born. Though Samuel Langhorne Clemens toiled in obscurity as a river boat pilot on the Mississippi and to this day remains a name oft forgotten, that young man became famous around the globe under his unforgettable pseudonym, Mark Twain.

Although Twain spent the first 30 years of his life working odd jobs, his printing background, sharp wit, and humor helped establish him first as a journalist and later an author. His writing career took off in 1865 after his humorous short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was published. Newspapers enamored with his humorous accounts of his travels began hiring him to chronicle his trips through travelogues, such as The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress and A Tramp Abroad.

Twain’s meteoric rise in literature took off in the 1870s with the publications of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Prince and the Pauper, novels that demonstrated Twain’s versatility, with Tom Sawyer capturing the essence of American childhood along the Mississippi and The Prince and the Pauper providing a biting social commentary that displayed Twain’s wit and humor. Those books were followed by Twain’s crowning achievement, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which combined the whimsical adventurousness of Tom Sawyer with social commentary about American culture and its treatment of blacks. Huckleberry Finn has long been regarded as the first “Great American Novel”.

Despite his success, the last two decades of his life were personally and professionally trying. Family problems and the deaths of his wife and daughter near the end of his life made him depressed, and he was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1894, even though he was one of the most famous authors in the world. When he died in 1910, the day after Halley’s Comet returned, he had finished his life as the man William Faulkner considered "the father of American literature."

An Interactive Biography Mark Twain details Twain’s life and career, including all of its famous ups and infamous downs, while also analyzing the literary legacy he left. Along with the only known video footage of Twain and pictures of important people, places, and events in his life, you will learn about “the father of American literature” like never before.

47 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 6, 2013

About the author

Charles River Editors is an independent publisher of thousands of ebooks on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Apple iBookstore & provider of original content for third parties.