Description
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, is the author of such classics as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Prince and the Pauper. He was born in Florida, Missouri and grew up along the Mississippi Valley. Although he left school at the age of 12 when his father died, he was eventually awarded honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, miner, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, novelist, and publisher. His vivid imagination, keen sense of humor, and sharp wit resulted in some of the most beloved classics of American literature.
This book contains some of Clemens' best loved short stories and essays, both humorous and thought provoking. Includes The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. The Stolen White Elephant, A Dog's Tale, and Extracts from Adam's Diary, among others, illustrated.
About the Author
Mark Twain was America's foremost novelist, journalist, and satirist who has been hailed as the "father of American literature. And he was also an accomplished travel writer. Born in Missouri in 1835 as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, he spent his early years as a Mississippi River pilot and as a prospector in Nevada before he settled in California. He wrote his first travel book, "The Innocents Abroad," after an 1867 trip to Palestine. After his second trip to Europe, which took him (and his family) to Germany for the first time, he wrote "A Tramp Abroad." His third trip abroad brought the family to Berlin, from October 1891 to March 1892, first in a tenement in the district of Tiergarten, later in a posh hotel Unter den Linden. Twain was invited to Berlin salons and socialized with Prussian royalty, including the Kaiser. However, he suffered from rheumatism, so he never wrote a book about Berlin, even though he pondered many ideas. He did write a number of shorter pieces, as well as the first chapter of a novel, most of it unpublished up to today. He also met one of his future friends in Berlin, Rudolf Lindau, a well-traveled novelist and Bismarck's press secretary. Eventually, the family would move to Vienna and Italy. Twain embarked on a world tour to pay off his debts. He returned to upstate New York in 1900, where he died ten years later.
