Mark Twain

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1.

In 1835 Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in a town called Hannibal in the state of Missouri. He grew up in a very well educated family. His father was a judge and was very harsh with his family. He did not tolerate bad behavior. Samuel was 3 years old when his father died leaving the family with very little money. Hannibal was a very tough environment to grow up in, there was a lot of violence against blacks, children and the elderly, murderer was a part of every day life. Later in life when he started working he changed his name to Mark Twain

He was a troublemaker in school, he played hooky and was very mischievous. He often went out on the Mississippi river. He loved being a part of nature and watching the activity that took place on the enormous river. The river was a very big part of his life, which we also can see later in his books.

The first job Mark Twain had was during the civil war. He worked as a river pilot on the big steamboats that carried ammunition and food to the soldiers. During the civil war he fought with the southern army, before the war he had not had many opinions of the war and its consequences, but after he was against it and he would do anything to avoid it.
After that he followed the example of many other Americans. He tried his luck as a gold-digger during the gold rush. But as so many others he failed to find gold. Instead he got a job as a journalist for a newspaper and at this point he changed his name from Samuel Langhorne Clemens to Mark Twain. He had got the name from a steamboat during his time on the river.

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When Mark had earned a bit of money he started traveling out into the world. On one of his trips he met his wife, Olivia Langdon. She came from a wealthy family and thanks to her they were able to live luxuriously. Mark and Olivia had four children, their firstborn son, Langdon, died at two years of age, but his three sisters, Susy, Clara and Jean lived
longer. Olivia and Mark married in 1870 and had a long life together until Olivia’s death in 1904.




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Mark Twains first book was called The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calevaras County, And Other Sketches. This was a collection of stories from his days in the west during the gold rush. Among his other writings are: Tom Sawyer, Hucklberry Finn, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince And The Pauper, Life On The Mississippi, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, Joan of Arc, Following The Equator, Eve’s Diary, and many many more. Mark Twain was on of America’s top entertainers. He could have people laughing hysterically before he even opened his mouth. The sheer sight of him was enough to send people into fits of laughter. He worked for a big newspaper in San Fransisco, rumor has it that he had to leave that job because he challenged his editor to a fight and to avoid anti-duelling laws he left the state. In 1866, he took a four-month trip to Hawaii as a correspondent for the Sacramento Union newspaper. When he returned to San Fransisco Mark Twain started giving lectures based on work. This was an immediate success and this spurred him on to arrange his first lecture tour, a two month trip through California and Nevada. For the remainder of his life Mark Twain was one of the most popular and sought after speakers in the USA. By now Mark Twain was becoming quite well known, thanks to his lecture tours. At a later time he worked as a secretary to a senator, and even later on he founded his own publishing company called the Charles L. Webster& Company. However after ten years this company went bankrupt. He managed during this time to invest in inventions that were not profitable and caused him to become even in greater debt.

4.
Tom Sawyer is one of Twain’s most well known novels. This book is to a greater part based on his childhood experiences growing up in Hannibal. In the pretext of his books he tells us that most of the adventures that Tom Sawyer has are based on true events. Tom Sawyer is a mix and combination of three boys that Twain knew when he was growing up. Furthermore are the rest of the characters based on somebody that Twain knew in his early years. The Adventures of Tam Sawyer paints a very innocent picture of a young boys life by the Mississippi River. The book never deals directly with slavery but I get the sense that foreigners or outsiders are unwelcome in this small town. Tom Sawyer is still one of Mark Twains most popular novels.

To carry on with the success of Tom Sawyer, Twain began writing another novel called Huckleberry Finn. This novel however was more serious since Twain focused on the slavery situation and the prejudices that lived in the South. He did not work on the novel to long since the dark tone that the book set would not have been popular with the more upstanding citizens who were concerned about maintaining the power they had. So many Southern politicians made an effort to control and oppress the black men and women whom the war had freed. Mark Twain who was against slavery now decided to finish his book. When it was released it was a success with both critics and “commoners”. The novel occasionally has been banned in Southern states because of its critical views on the South and the hypocrisies of slavery. Others have dismissed the book as vulgar or racist because it uses the word “nigger,” a term which meaning lessens the novel’s deeper themes and even prevent some from reading and enjoying it altogether.

Mark Twain was a very appreciated man in his time and a sought after speaker he was known for his storytelling and presence on stage. He spent many years in California working for newspapers and his writings were appreciated for there straight forwardness and there humor. Twain accepted a position as a correspondent on a ship that sailed to Europe, after returning to the USA after this trip he was even more well known than when he left. He earned all the respect he had from many upraised citizens in his time.

5.
The late 1800’s and the beginning of the 1900’s were called the Gilded Age. During the "Gilded Age," every who achieved wealth celebrated it as never before. In New York, the opera, the theatre, and fancy parties took up the upper class leisure hours. Sherry´s Restaurant hosted formal horseback dinners for the New York Riding Club. Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish once threw a dinner party to honor her dog who arrived sporting a $15,000 diamond collar.
While the rich wore diamonds, many wore rags. In 1890, 11 million of the nation´s 12 million families earned less than $1200 per year; of this group, the average annual income was $380, well below the poverty line. Poor Americans and immigrants were crowded into urban areas. Public housing spread across city landscapes, packed with crime and filth. Americans had sewing machines, gramophones, skyscrapers, and even electric lights, yet most people lived in poverty.
To those who worked in Carnegie´s mills and in the nation´s factories and sweatshops, the lives of the millionaires seemed very unnecessary. Violent strikes and riots blew in over the nation through the turn of the century. For immediate relief, the urban poor often turned to political machines. During the first years of the Gilded Age, corruption extended to the highest levels of government. During Ulysses S. Grant´s presidency, the president and his cabinet were implicated in the Credit Mobilier, the Gold Conspiracy, the Whiskey Ring, and the notorious Salary Grab.
Europeans were appalled. America may have had money and factories, they felt, but it lacked sophistication. When French prime minister Georges Clemenceau visited, he said the nation had gone from a stage of barbarism to one of decadence -- without achieving any civilization between the two....