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The Life of Mark Twain #2
The Life of Mark Twain: The Middle Years, 1871–1891 (Volume 2)
Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 20 20
The second volume of Gary Scharnhorst’s three-volume biography chronicles the life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens between his move with his family from Buffalo to Elmira (and then Hartford) in spring 1871 and their departure from Hartford for Europe in mid-1891.
During this time he wrote and published some of his best-known works, including Roughing It, The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Significant events include his trips to England (1872–73) and Bermuda (1877); the controversy over his Whittier Birthday Speech in December 1877; his 1878–79 Wanderjahr on the continent; his 1882 tour of the Mississippi valley; his 1884–85 reading tour with George Washington Cable; his relationships with his publishers (Elisha Bliss, James R. Osgood, Andrew Chatto, and Charles L. Webster); the death of his son, Langdon, and the births and childhoods of his daughters Susy, Clara, and Jean; as well as the several lawsuits and personal feuds in which he was involved. During these years, too, Clemens expressed his views on racial and gender equality and turned to political mugwumpery; supported the presidential campaigns of Grover Cleveland; advocated for labor rights, international copyright, and revolution in Russia; founded his own publishing firm; and befriended former president Ulysses S. Grant, supervising the publication of Grant’s Memoirs.
The Life of Mark Twain is the first multi-volume biography of Samuel Clemens to appear in more than a century and has already been hailed as the definitive Twain biography.
The second volume of Gary Scharnhorst’s three-volume biography chronicles the life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens between his move with his family from Buffalo to Elmira (and then Hartford) in spring 1871 and their departure from Hartford for Europe in mid-1891.
During this time he wrote and published some of his best-known works, including Roughing It, The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
Significant events include his trips to England (1872–73) and Bermuda (1877); the controversy over his Whittier Birthday Speech in December 1877; his 1878–79 Wanderjahr on the continent; his 1882 tour of the Mississippi valley; his 1884–85 reading tour with George Washington Cable; his relationships with his publishers (Elisha Bliss, James R. Osgood, Andrew Chatto, and Charles L. Webster); the death of his son, Langdon, and the births and childhoods of his daughters Susy, Clara, and Jean; as well as the several lawsuits and personal feuds in which he was involved. During these years, too, Clemens expressed his views on racial and gender equality and turned to political mugwumpery; supported the presidential campaigns of Grover Cleveland; advocated for labor rights, international copyright, and revolution in Russia; founded his own publishing firm; and befriended former president Ulysses S. Grant, supervising the publication of Grant’s Memoirs.
The Life of Mark Twain is the first multi-volume biography of Samuel Clemens to appear in more than a century and has already been hailed as the definitive Twain biography.
777 pages, Hardcover
Published June 21, 2019
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20 people want to read
About the author
Gary Scharnhorst
83 books5 followersGary Scharnhorst, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico, is the author or editor of more than forty books. He is also the editor of the journal American Literary Realism and the editor in alternating years of the research annual American Literary Scholarship.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 23, 2023
Another superbly detailed and supremely informative entry in Gary Scharnhorst's 3-book biography of Mark Twain, aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a cultural figure of such magnitude I've heard him described as history's first global superstar.
The real thrill in reading a biography this detailed is coming so close to the subject's daily life and what made it tick. How many writers have wanted to be the next Mark Twain? How many career coaches, life coaches, celebrity wannabees have wondered what makes real success and in Twain's case, lasting and legendary fame?
Read this book and you'll get a darned good idea.
Twain, aka Clemens, was tireless in a way few people can even imagine. He was a tireless socializer, self-promoter, connector, and maven. His works were good, some -- like Huck Finn -- great. But it was Twain's constant attention to the many people in his wide sphere that made him famous. Art without promotion is, well, pretty artless. Mark Twain proved this more than most.
In a biography this granular, with such attention paid to every review, every newspaper article, every stop on a lecture tour, right down to the choice of hotels, you see how surprisingly well connected we were way back then -- 1871-1891, long before the Internet and mass communication.
The newspaper crowd followed Mark Twain like few others, reporting on his every utterance, from New York and Nevada to Australia and Europe. Reporters sniped, carped, praised, criticized, lavished, and loathed the man -- journalism back then was frank to the point of near cruelty, at least by today's standards.
That Twain had the power to capture so much of the global media 150 years ago is so remarkable, it defies analysis. And rather than analyze it, Gary Scharnhorst records it and presents it.
On the darker side, one gets the impression Twain's friends often screwed him. Led him -- and his considerable wealth -- astray, with questionable investments like the Paige Typesetter and iffy enterprises like the books Twain published through the Charles Webster publishing company he owned, to the plays he either produced or co-produced.
Longtime publishers like Elisha Bliss felt fine cheating him, knowing -- as becomes clear in this book -- that Mark Twain had an unusually hard time saying "no."
Even family, like nephew-in-law Charles Webster and brother Orion, didn't treat Twain well. As much as he did for so many people, Twain emerges looking underappreciated, except by his wife Livy and a small circle of close friends like William Dean Howells.
Twain had no handlers, this being long before Taylor Swift and talent management companies. The only person who consistently looked out for Twain's well-being, outside of his immediate family, was Howells, who had his own limitations and, one suspects by reading between the lines, a kind of awe about his friend that hampered honest intervention at key moments.
We also see Twain's legendary grudge holding, with everyone from fellow author Bret Harte, to reporters, critics, and business people he finally realized were either screwing him, or screwing with him. He was relentlessly unforgiving.
But hard work? The 4-month lecture tour with George Washington Cable may be the best example of what it takes to achieve celebrity: relentlessness against all odds. The awful weather, the tireless travel, the dirt water towns, the grand metropolises -- Twain toured them all, with a presentation it would be delightful to hear recorded. It must have been almost hypnotic in its power to charm, persuade, humor, and entertain.
Twain's peers in The Biz -- most notably the Boston literary lions and lionesses -- seemed to view him rather askance. It's never clear how much they either respected or rebuffed him, but one comes away thinking it was a chronically uncomfortable relationship, this man of the people versus American royalty.
Man of the people. That was Mark Twain, to this day maybe the only historical figure every part of America can rightly claim -- West, East, South, North.
Gary Scharnhorst shows us why, and with this striking addition to the biographical canon, the true power of that old adage about how we stand on the shoulders of giants.
Now onto Book Three.
The real thrill in reading a biography this detailed is coming so close to the subject's daily life and what made it tick. How many writers have wanted to be the next Mark Twain? How many career coaches, life coaches, celebrity wannabees have wondered what makes real success and in Twain's case, lasting and legendary fame?
Read this book and you'll get a darned good idea.
Twain, aka Clemens, was tireless in a way few people can even imagine. He was a tireless socializer, self-promoter, connector, and maven. His works were good, some -- like Huck Finn -- great. But it was Twain's constant attention to the many people in his wide sphere that made him famous. Art without promotion is, well, pretty artless. Mark Twain proved this more than most.
In a biography this granular, with such attention paid to every review, every newspaper article, every stop on a lecture tour, right down to the choice of hotels, you see how surprisingly well connected we were way back then -- 1871-1891, long before the Internet and mass communication.
The newspaper crowd followed Mark Twain like few others, reporting on his every utterance, from New York and Nevada to Australia and Europe. Reporters sniped, carped, praised, criticized, lavished, and loathed the man -- journalism back then was frank to the point of near cruelty, at least by today's standards.
That Twain had the power to capture so much of the global media 150 years ago is so remarkable, it defies analysis. And rather than analyze it, Gary Scharnhorst records it and presents it.
On the darker side, one gets the impression Twain's friends often screwed him. Led him -- and his considerable wealth -- astray, with questionable investments like the Paige Typesetter and iffy enterprises like the books Twain published through the Charles Webster publishing company he owned, to the plays he either produced or co-produced.
Longtime publishers like Elisha Bliss felt fine cheating him, knowing -- as becomes clear in this book -- that Mark Twain had an unusually hard time saying "no."
Even family, like nephew-in-law Charles Webster and brother Orion, didn't treat Twain well. As much as he did for so many people, Twain emerges looking underappreciated, except by his wife Livy and a small circle of close friends like William Dean Howells.
Twain had no handlers, this being long before Taylor Swift and talent management companies. The only person who consistently looked out for Twain's well-being, outside of his immediate family, was Howells, who had his own limitations and, one suspects by reading between the lines, a kind of awe about his friend that hampered honest intervention at key moments.
We also see Twain's legendary grudge holding, with everyone from fellow author Bret Harte, to reporters, critics, and business people he finally realized were either screwing him, or screwing with him. He was relentlessly unforgiving.
But hard work? The 4-month lecture tour with George Washington Cable may be the best example of what it takes to achieve celebrity: relentlessness against all odds. The awful weather, the tireless travel, the dirt water towns, the grand metropolises -- Twain toured them all, with a presentation it would be delightful to hear recorded. It must have been almost hypnotic in its power to charm, persuade, humor, and entertain.
Twain's peers in The Biz -- most notably the Boston literary lions and lionesses -- seemed to view him rather askance. It's never clear how much they either respected or rebuffed him, but one comes away thinking it was a chronically uncomfortable relationship, this man of the people versus American royalty.
Man of the people. That was Mark Twain, to this day maybe the only historical figure every part of America can rightly claim -- West, East, South, North.
Gary Scharnhorst shows us why, and with this striking addition to the biographical canon, the true power of that old adage about how we stand on the shoulders of giants.
Now onto Book Three.
January 12, 2025
The Middle Years of the this exhaustive triple volume biography covers the "peak" or "prime" years of Twain's reputation. Having established himself as a literary name with the Western travel writing that is best exemplified by "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", and his travelogues The Innocents Abroad and Life on the Mississippi, the latter a type of early life Autobiography (which is fleshed out by the official Autobiography later in life), Twain embarks on the satirical fiction that he is best remembered for today. This volume is the years of Tom Sayer, Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. They are also the happiest years of Twain's domestic life, the yeas spent living with wife and daughters in Hartford, surrounded mostly by friends, and dealing irascibly with unscrupulous predators in the publishing industry.
Samuel Clemens has finally become a name in the industry and hobnobs among the literary elite. He also meets Presidents and politicians and finds a way to earn the publishing rights to Ulysses S. Grant's memoir, which he finishes days before expiring from throat cancer. as we leave him at the end of this volume, he embarks for a large tour of Europe, little knowing he will never return to Hartford again and his family will tragically be splintered forever.
This series is the biography for completists. It is exhaustive and at times exhausting. It details every trip and every stop Twain ever made and it sometimes reads as wearisome as that sounds. However, Twain led a peripatetic life, almost as if he was conditioned by his early life on the Mississippi to explore every nook, cranny, and bend of the world and to detail it for us. These three books detail those details. Where it excels is when Scharnhorst gathers the key reviews and public reactions towards his work, though it is primarily a literary circle looking outwards perspective. It also details the writing process of SC/MT quite well as well as his family circle as well as it can possibly be detailed without intrusion (I daresay I don't think Twain would be too embarrassed or infuriated knowing these details emerge long after their deaths - though by modern perspectives, there is nothing to be embarrassed by). If you want the complete overrun of the Twain publishing world, as well as a significant survey of the interactions of a good portion of American letters in the second half of the nineteenth century, this series will give you much to ponder and many leads in research directions. A single volume biography would do for most other readers. The Powers biography is quite good and Ron Chernow is bringing his own powers to bear in May 2025. Regardless, plenty of hilarious quotes and perspectives and much to chew on, because just when you think you knew Twain, another biography will alter those perspectives. The great chameleon of American literature.
Samuel Clemens has finally become a name in the industry and hobnobs among the literary elite. He also meets Presidents and politicians and finds a way to earn the publishing rights to Ulysses S. Grant's memoir, which he finishes days before expiring from throat cancer. as we leave him at the end of this volume, he embarks for a large tour of Europe, little knowing he will never return to Hartford again and his family will tragically be splintered forever.
This series is the biography for completists. It is exhaustive and at times exhausting. It details every trip and every stop Twain ever made and it sometimes reads as wearisome as that sounds. However, Twain led a peripatetic life, almost as if he was conditioned by his early life on the Mississippi to explore every nook, cranny, and bend of the world and to detail it for us. These three books detail those details. Where it excels is when Scharnhorst gathers the key reviews and public reactions towards his work, though it is primarily a literary circle looking outwards perspective. It also details the writing process of SC/MT quite well as well as his family circle as well as it can possibly be detailed without intrusion (I daresay I don't think Twain would be too embarrassed or infuriated knowing these details emerge long after their deaths - though by modern perspectives, there is nothing to be embarrassed by). If you want the complete overrun of the Twain publishing world, as well as a significant survey of the interactions of a good portion of American letters in the second half of the nineteenth century, this series will give you much to ponder and many leads in research directions. A single volume biography would do for most other readers. The Powers biography is quite good and Ron Chernow is bringing his own powers to bear in May 2025. Regardless, plenty of hilarious quotes and perspectives and much to chew on, because just when you think you knew Twain, another biography will alter those perspectives. The great chameleon of American literature.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews