It seems that every person who is fond of reading, knows his name. Mark Twain remains popular for many years. Who does not know ’The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’? This novel is the first thing you remember when you hear the name of the writer even though he has written a lot of good books, articles, satiric stories. But the work that simply turned the American literature and very precisely defined political views of the writer, became the novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”.Mark Twain had no doubt that the modern world is built on the principles of inequality. He believed that the “democratic” American society, the rights of ordinary people are infringed and that the vaunted American “freedom of speech” is a bubble that burst at the slightest touch. These ideas of equality, freedom, tolerance, without which there is no true democracy, permeate in all his late works, and are at the head of the corner of novel about the adventures of the little, poor and the defenseless boy Huckleberry.
Mark Twain was born in a family with seven children. His childhood was held in the small town of Hannibal, where his father opened a small law firm. As recalled by the writer, they lived quite modest and sometimes very poor. Things got even worse when his father died of pneumonia, leaving his children nothing but huge debts. Samuel was actively engaged in self-education, sitting with the books in public libraries in the evenings. He worked as a journalist in various newspapers, publishing his works, satiriс essays under the pen name. His works became popular, the stories were loved by readers and critics, his publications were reprinted throughout the country.
Some people may know that Mark Twain is an artistic nickname, the real name of the author is Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Became famous as a writer, Mark Twain was a man of many talents. He worked as a typesetter, reporter, the pilot on the Mississippi River steamboat. He was searching for silver in Nevada and gold in California. He traveled to many countries of the world. He successfully lectured and contemporaries considered him as a gifted orator. He was friends with many prominent people of his time and was a man of very progressive views. It is worth noting, that Mark Twain took his nickname from the time when he was working as a pilot on a steamboat. “Mark twain” in the slang of the Mississippi pilots meant “two measurement”, ie the depth of two fathoms, the minimum required for the passage of river vessels.
In most of his works, Twain remained a cheerful writer and remarkable humorist. Most of his works connected with the traditions of folk humor of America, which gives it a special charm to numerous stories, vivid national flavor. Twain saw funny things in the most minor events and about the most ordinary things he wrote ingeniously and wittily. He shown the mercenary spirit of the bourgeoisie, greed and unscrupulous politicians. In the story “Running for governor,” he ridicules the election campaign, the competition turned into slanderers. In “Journalism in Tennessee” he depicts the rough manners of the American press, the pursuit of sensation, unprincipled struggle of competing newspapers. The world-famous stories such as “An Encounter With An Interviewer”, “My watch”, “How I edited an agricultural newspaper” et al. are attractive by the ingenuity of the author, that creates extremely funny in its absurdity and unexpected situation. Twain was a very observant writer, a fine connoisseur of psychology and way of life of ordinary American people, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois environment.
Samuel Clemens was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York. His grave is a monument to a height of two fathoms, as a tribute to a famous name. But the best monuments are his books, that will remain with us forever. A brilliant comedian and prankster, Twain remains true to himself, even after the death. The last book he wrote was an autobiography. According to the wishes of the writer, the first volume of his autobiography was published in a century after his death, in November 2010 (and this book instantly became a bestseller). The second volume is to be published in twenty-five years after the first (in 2035), and the third – after another twenty-five years (in 2060).