Search

Showing results for “Mark Twain”

Jump to a topic

Mark TwainMark Twain was an American writer and humorist. He is considered one of the most important names in American literature, known in particular for “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” a novel that remains both influential and controversial to this day. Twain was born Samuel Clemens in Missouri in 1835. His family was poor and, after his father’s death, Twain dropped out of school to begin working at the age of 12. Twain pursued several jobs before finding success as a journalist. He started using his pen name in the 1860s and soon developed a reputation as a sharp, satirical writer. Despite producing several bestsellers, Twain went bankrupt in 1894. A subsequent speaking tour reversed his fortunes and cemented his status as one of America’s earliest celebrities.Explore Mark Twain

Stand-up Comedy Walt Whitman Ancient Rome The Marathon Retail Investors Michelin Guide Major League Baseball Viking Project

What we've found

Mark Twain once panned 'A Christmas Carol'The American writer was not a fan of the book, finding it shallow. In an 1867 review, he wrote, "There is no heart. No feeling—it is nothing but glittering frostwork." National Endowment for the Arts Mark Twain had many gripes with the US Postal ServiceTwain often complained about the cost of postage and the service's inefficiencies, often sharing these criticisms in newspaper opinion pieces. Still, in 1907, the USPS issued a commemorative stamp featuring his face. Atlas Obscura Mark Twain abhorred Jane Austen's writingTwain was no fan of the novelist, calling her work "impossible." In an 1898 letter to a friend, Twain wrote, "Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone." JSTOR Take a tour of Mark Twain's Connecticut mansionTwain and his family lived in a three-story, 25-room mansion in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1874 to 1891. Today, the home is a Twain museum, which includes several interesting artifacts, like his annotated books. Great Documentaries Thomas Edison captured the only known footage of Mark TwainThe inventor was a pioneer in the early film industry and made his own motion pictures. In 1909, he shot a short film featuring Twain at Stormfield, his property in Connecticut. In it, Twain wears his iconic white suit and drinks tea with his daughters. George Odell One actor made a career out of playing Mark TwainHal Holbrook toured in the one-man show “Mark Twain Tonight!” for over six decades. In the performances, Holbrook wore Twain’s iconic white suit and offered witticisms similar to Twain’s famous lectures. Holbrook won a Tony Award in 1966 for a Broadway run of the show. The New York Times Mark Twain invented an unsuccessful board game“Memory Builder” was based on pinning historical events in their correct chronological order. It was test-marketed in 1891, but never took off. One critic said, “The game looked like a cross between an income tax form and a table of logarithms.” Twain Quotes Mark Twain coined the phrase 'The Gilded Age'The writer's 1873 book "The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today" (cowritten with newspaper editor Charles Dudley Warner) satirized the speculative investing and greed that took place following the Civil War. That era is now known as the Gilded Age, a term derived from the novel. (Some readers may experience a paywall.) The New York Times Clemens' pen name 'Mark Twain' is a nautical referenceSamuel Clemens became a steamboat pilot’s apprentice in 1857 while writing a travelogue for a small newspaper, and earned his pilot’s license two years later. During that time, he learned the term “mark twain,” which meant 12 feet, something shipworkers would yell when they were approaching shallow waters. In 1861, he signed a travel letter under the pseudonym “Mark Twain” and used it for the rest of his career. Los Angeles Review of Books Mark Twain once challenged a rival newspaper editor to a duelWhile writing for a newspaper in Virginia City, Nevada, Twain published a story about a local fundraiser, accusing the paper’s rival of rescinding their donation. The problem was that the story was untrue: It was a hoax that he had concocted while drunk. The affair led to a protracted, public back-and-forth, with Twain challenging the editor of the rival paper to a duel; likewise, two other men challenged Twain to a duel. Twain ultimately left town, but wrote about the episode later on in an essay titled “How I Escaped Being Killed in a Duel.” Library of America Read the works of Mark TwainTwain's books are in the public domain, meaning they can be freely distributed. Digital versions of his classic novels—including "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"—as well as many of his short stories and satirical essays can be accessed through Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg Mark Twain was an early influence on stand-upThe writer’s live lectures looked a lot like modern stand-up comedy specials. Twain’s world tour in the 1890s featured 90-minute performances in which he stood alone on the stage, delivering long, comedic monologues with his hand perched on his chin. PBS News 'The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.'- Mark Twain, from "Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales" BrainyQuote Why is Bob Dylan on Patreon?The singer's notorious for his inscrutability, but his venture into the content subscription website might be one of his stranger choices, especially given the posted content that resembles AI-generated material. Pitchfork's Nina Corcoran surveys the site and tries to make sense. Pitchfork A linguist argues Jane Austen's language is what defines her fictionWhile many readers love Austen's novels for their characters and their romantic plots, Chi Luu argues that many people (including literary luminaries like Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, and Ralph Waldo Emerson) underestimate how her adept wordplay, sense of irony, and memorable turns of phrase are what have made readers fall in love with her fiction for centuries. JSTOR One graffiti artist turned a train tunnel into his galleryChris Pape, also known as Freedom, began exploring a tunnel under Manhattan's Riverside Park when he was a kid. As he grew more involved with graffiti, he turned its walls into a massive art project, one that reflected both the history of graffiti and the people who made the tunnel their home. VICE Wynton Marsalis believes syncopation is part of jazz's American characterThe trumpeter argues that jazz's approach to syncopation is part of an American tradition that offers the unexpected, citing Jonas Salk, Mark Twain, and fusion cuisine as parallels. Harvard University Hip-hop legends the Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, and DMX all attended the same New York high schoolAll four emcees attended George Westinghouse Career and Technical Education High School, a vocational public school in downtown Brooklyn. Jay-Z and Busta Rhymes were well-known as rappers when they were in school, once even battle-rapping one another in the lunchroom. (Jay-Z won.) Mic Satire often employs ironySatirists often make their point indirectly through ironic statements, indirectly highlighting the foolishness of the thing they’re mocking. An example is Mark Twain's satirical 1882 essay, “Advice to Youth.” “Build your character thoughtfully and painstakingly upon these precepts,” he wrote, “and by and by, when you have got it built, you will be surprised and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resembles everybody else’s.” Masterclass Disney was saved by 'Cinderella,' which brought the company out of debtProducing war propaganda and training films helped the company towards solvency, but the military content wasn't a cure-all. Disney wasn't in the clear until 1950's "Cinderella," a much-needed hit. The movie's success was largely due to the return of the company's best writers and the work of Mary Blair, a watercolor artist who brought a more whimsical style to the film. Smithsonian Magazine NASA uses extreme Earth environments to prepare for space explorationAnalog missions in volcanic terrains and craters mimic Martian and lunar environments. Crew members operating in these missions, including at sites in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and Hawai'i, test suits and specialized space instruments under simulated conditions. The Conversation Twain claimed to possess 'mental telegraphy'In an 1891 essay, the writer claimed to possess psychic powers. It’s something that seemingly supported by his mother and his own death: Twain predicted he would die the day after Halley’s Comet returned in 1910, which did indeed happen. Weird History Twain didn’t start wearing his iconic white suit until later in lifeThe writer first wore the white suit in 1906, at the Library of Congress. “I have reached the age where dark clothes have a depressing effect on me,” Twain told the Washington Post. “I prefer light clothing, colors, like those worn by the ladies at the opera.” Library of Congress Twain started writing 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' to distract himselfIn 1876, Twain mentioned that “a double-barreled novel” he’d been working on was essentially dead. Instead, he began working on “another boys’ book—more to be at work than anything else.” That book was “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” the text that would go on to define American literature. Mark Twain Project He was one of the first writers to cover surfingFor his 1872 travelogue “Roughing It”, Mark Twain visited Hawaii and described a then-peculiar sport: surfing. He even recalls his own attempts to catch a wave, writing, “I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three-quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me.” Surfer Many consider Twain 'the father of American literature'In "Green Hills of Africa," Ernest Hemingway declared that all modern American literature sprang from Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." That's a sentiment shared by many scholars, who assert that Twain's book changed American fiction by challenging the country's racist history and incorporating a more realistic vernacular. HISTORY Biographer Ron Chernow believes Twain's legacy embodies 'the best and worst of our culture'Twain’s childhood hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, attracts countless tourists seeking Twain-themed reenactors and museums. Ron Chernow, author of a 2025 about the writer, argues that the ongoing interest in Hannibal and in Twain’s writing is because his work and life typify the American experience. CBS Sunday Morning NASA's ESCAPADE mission will study Mars' atmosphereThe $80M mission—a collaboration between private companies, universities, and NASA—sent two copy machine-sized orbiters on a Blue Origin rocket to the red planet to study its magnetic field and atmospheric loss. The Conversation ‘Twin Peaks’ was David Lynch’s ode to the soap operaIn the 1980s, David Lynch was primarily known as the director of art films like “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet.” But “Twin Peaks,” his primetime ABC show with writer Mark Frost, was a take on the soap opera, leaning into the genre’s tropes: stilted dialogue, affairs, missing person, and melodrama. Mental Floss Solutions of bioluminescent bacteria can create FOMO-inducing living artA 2002 exhibition at Montana State University-Bozeman placed the bacteria onto petri dishes that served as macroscopic pixels to create images. Once the bacteria finished eating all the food in the sealed dishes, the light slowly faded away, ending the exhibit. The Yellow Sparrow ...and allowed newly arrived European immigrants to maintain their cultures19th-century public schools often included Protestant spiritual instruction, something that was disturbing for Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland, and elsewhere, who found homes in neighborhood “parochial” schools. Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia The 25 most important stunt scenes of the 21st CenturyThe Academy Awards will finally recognize stunt design at its 2028 ceremony, leading one writer to gather the best stunt sequences from the century, highlighting jaw-dropping scenes from "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "The Matrix," and more. The Ringer Shape memory alloys 'remember' their previous form and restore themselves if deformedNitinol, one such alloy, can bend back into its trained shape if exposed to heat because of a solid-to-solid phase transformation. Some showerheads already use nitinol to regulate hot water and prevent unintentional burns. Verge Science Whitman led a Lincoln lecture late in lifeWhitman toured several cities with “The Death of Lincoln,” a lecture series about the slain president that sought to establish him as a crucial figured in American history. The talks attracted famous figures, including Mark Twain and General William Tecumseh Sherman. The Library of Congress Why Percival Everett decided to reimagine 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'Percival Everett's novel "James"—a retelling of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Jim, an escaped slave—was one of the most acclaimed books of 2024. In this interview, Everett explains why he decided to rework the classic American novel and why he felt it was necessary to infuse his own with a different voice. Amanpour and Company Explore the Spirit and Opportunity Martian roversThe twin machines were tasked with studying the geology of Mars to identify evidence of past water activity, determine the composition of minerals, rocks, and soils, and perform "ground truth" experiments to calibrate and validate observations made by Mars orbiters. NASA

Try another search?

Jane Austen Satire The Novel NASA Mars