Mark Twain : biography

The writer was always interested not only in contemporary Europe but also in its Middle Ages. That interest revealed in the writer’s novel “The Prince and the Pauper” published in 1882. In that period the writer had already been disappointed with the country where “every citizen was absolutely free”. He saw the real situation – evident stratification of the American society of that period into oppressors and oppressed (it could be compared with the stratification of the Middle Ages in many aspects) and complete impossibility to dive out of that mire of “equal capabilities”. That was the main theme of the story – the way that a ragged fellow from London slum and the king’s child exchanged their positions and the difference of them was far from evident.

We can also include the novel “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” in that “Middle Age circle”. The novel was published in 1889. It should be mentioned that the novel was a pure of novels abut knights. The story gave a good idea for future novels and films – travelling through centuries.

The full collection of mark Twain’s works has not been collected yet. The trouble is that many of his public lectures and speech were not written or were lost and some of his works and correspondence were forbidden for publishing by Mark Twain while he was alive. Later his heirs restricted access to his unfinished works and personal diary.

It should be mentioned that having won fame and recognition Mark Twain spend much effort to help young writers to achieve success. Except his influence he also helped the beginners with his own publishing firm.

There were two of the writer’s greatest likings as his friends mentioned: smoking tube and playing billiard. Many people who visited him in his house told that as they got into his room they found him into a cloud of deep tobacco smoke. However Mark twain answered that they were exaggerating.

The writer’s active civil and social position sometimes caused frequent prohibition of his books by censorship. There were a lot of writings that were not published because of mark Twain’s own will. Taking into account that some of them could insult the feelings of religionists and his relatives’ opinions. So, “The Mysterious Stranger” was published only in 1916. However Mark Twain treated censorship with great irony. When he learnt that the Massachusetts library withdrew the novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” out of the fond in 1885 he told his publisher that if Huck was eliminated from the libraries just as trash suitable for ghetto it was splendid and they would be able to sell 20 000 more books.

Literary success and comfortable family life were over for Mark Twain in the beginning on 90s. There were a lot of reasons and one of them founding his own publishing in 1884. The firm financed works at original printing machines. The firm became bankrupt in 1894 and it turned out that Mark Twain was up to his neck in debts. In order to fix the situation the writer started travelling all over the world to make money out of lectures.

But unfortunately luck was not on his side anymore. He had to go through the death of his beloved wife and three children and caused great depression – Mark Twain almost stopped joking. His close friend Henry Rogers running petrol business helped him to restore his financial state. Twain repeatedly thanked him in public for helping him avoiding the complete financial crash. But in 1909 his friend Rogers died.

The writer had been suffering from stenocardia. Doctors could cope with his frequents heart-attacks but on 21th of April in 1910 Mark Twain passed away and even the medicine was unable to save his life. One year before his death Mark Twain actually predicted his death saying that he entered his life in 1835 with comet Halley and he thought he was going to pass away with it.

That great writer came to literature as a humorist and patriot and finished his career as a satirist and atheist. Hemingway said that all American literature came out of the novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.