This encyclopedia includes more than 700 alphabetically arranged entries that cover a full variety of topics on Mark Twain's life, intellectual milieu, literary career, and achievements.

"A model reference work that can be used with profit and delight by general readers as well as by more advanced students of Twain. Highly recommended." - Library Journal The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain includes more than 700 alphabetically arranged entries that cover a full variety of topics on this major American writer's life, intellectual milieu, literary career, and achievements. Because so much of Twain's travel narratives, essays, letters, sketches, autobiography, journalism and fiction reflect his personal experience, particular attention is given to the delicate relationship between art and life, between artistic interpretations and their factual source. This comprehensive resource includes information on: Twain’s life and times: the author's childhood in Missouri and apprenticeship as a riverboat pilot, early career as a journalist in the West, world travels, friendships with well-known figures, reading and education, family life and career Complete Works: including novels, travel narratives, short stories, sketches, burlesques, and essays Significant characters, places, and landmarks Recurring concerns, themes or concepts: such as humor, language; race, war, religion, politics, imperialism, art and science Twain’s sources and influences. Useful for students, researchers, librarians and teachers, this volume features a chronology, a special appendix section tracking the poet's genealogy, and a thorough index. Each entry also includes a bibliography for further study.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2020 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.

Blending cultural history, biography, and literary criticism, this book explores how one of America's greatest icons used the French to help build a new sense of what it is to be “American” in the second half of the nineteenth century. While critics have generally dismissed Mark Twain’s relationship with France as hostile, Harrington and Jenn see Twain’s use of the French as a foil to help construct his identity as “the representative American.” Examining new materials that detail his Montmatre study, the carte de visite album, and a chronology of his visits to France, the book offers close readings of writings that have been largely ignored, such as The Innocents Adrift manuscript and the unpublished chapters of A Tramp Abroad, combining literary analysis, socio-historical context and biographical research.

A reference guide to the great American author (1835-1910) for students and general readers. The approximately 740 entries, arranged alphabetically, are essentially a collection of articles, ranging significantly in length and covering a variety of topics pertaining to Twain's life, intellectual milieu, literary career, and achievements. Because so much of Twain's writing reflects Samuel Clemens's personal experience, particular attention is given to the interface between art and life, i.e., between imaginative reconstructions and their factual sources of inspiration. Each entry is accompanied by a selective bibliography to guide readers to sources of additional information. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Mark Twain’s two most famous novels are published here as the continuous narrative that he originally envisioned. Twain started writing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn soon after finishing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), but difficulties with the sequel took him eight years to resolve. Consequently his contemporary readers failed to view the volumes as the companion books he had intended. In the twentieth century, publishers, librarians, and academics continued to separate the two titles, with the result that they are seldom read sequentially even though they feature many of the same characters and their narratives open in the identical Mississippi River village, St. Petersburg. This Original Text Edition brings the stories back together and faithfully follows the wording of the first editions.

This coming-of-age story captures a vanished world of outdoor action and introduces Mark Twain’s two most enduring literary characters, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. In a novel that Twain termed a “hymn to boyhood,” Tom and Huck fish and swim in the Mississippi River, search for buried treasure, and hide in a haunted house. Tom Sawyer falls for pretty Becky Thatcher, tricks his pals into painting a fence for him, and stages an elaborate prank on the schoolmaster. Around the edges of this idyllic boy-life, however, loom dangerous events in the fictional village of St. Petersburg: Tom and Huck witness a midnight murder in a graveyard, the killer escapes from the courtroom while Tom is testifying, Tom and Becky become lost in a labyrinthine cave, and two sinister villains plot robbery and revenge against a wealthy widow. This Original Text Edition faithfully follows the wording of the first edition, and the editor supplies a historical and literary introduction as well as a guide to Twain’s satirical targets

"An illustrated history of the Mississippi River in Mark Twain's life and works. Includes sketches from early editions of Twain's classics, and full-color paintings, postcards, photographs, and maps"--

In a radical departure from standard editions, Mark Twain’s most famous novel is published here with one disturbing racial label translated as “slave.” In seeking to record accurately the speech of uneducated boys and adults along the Mississippi River in the 1840s, Twain casually included an epithet that is diminishing the potential audience for his masterpiece. While dozens of other editions preserve the inflammatory slur that the author employed for the sake of realism, the NewSouth Edition proves that the main point of Twain’s masterpiece—the immense harm deriving from inhumane social conformity—comes through just as vibrantly without obliging readers to confront hundreds of insulting racial pejoratives. The editor’s Introduction supplies the historical and literary context for Twain’s groundbreaking book, along with a helpful guide to his satirical targets.

Explores the importance of economics and prosperity throughout Samuel Clemens's writing and personal life