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Summary
Summary
This book begins the first multi-volume biography of Samuel Clemens to appear in over a century. In the succeeding years, Clemens biographers have either tailored their narratives to fit the parameters of a single volume or focused on a particular period or aspect of Clemens's life, because the whole of that epic life cannot be compressed into a single volume. In The Life of Mark Twain , Gary Scharnhorst has chosen to write a complete biography plotted from beginning to end, from a single point of view, on an expansive canvas.
With dozens of Mark Twain biographies available, what is left unsaid? On average, a hundred Clemens letters and a couple of Clemens interviews surface every year. Scharnhorst has located documents relevant to Clemens's life in Missouri, along the Mississippi River, and in the West, including some which have been presumed lost. Over three volumes, Scharnhorst elucidates the life of arguably the greatest American writer and reveals the alchemy of his gifted imagination.
Author Notes
Gary Scharnhorst is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico. He is the author or editor of fifty books, including Mark Twain on Potholes and Politics: Letters to the Editor . He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In the first volume of a projected three-volume biography, Twain scholar Scharnhorst (Mark Twain on Potholes and Politics) offers a meticulously detailed and exhaustively researched chronicle of the famous author's life from his birth in 1835 through his move to Buffalo, New York, in 1870. Drawing on over 5,000 unpublished letters and other previously unseen archival material, Scharnhorst dutifully traces Twain's ancestry-he "was descended from a long line of lower-cas(t)e protestants, dissenters, and rapscallions"-and childhood with a "stern" and "austere" father. Weaving Twain's writings through the events of his life, Scharnhorst skillfully reveals the young Twain's exposure to violence and illness in the frontier villages in which he grew up, his early desire to be a minister, days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and early anonymous and pseudonymous writings. As Twain moves west from Hannibal, Mo., to San Francisco, he begins to bolster his reputation as a writer, finally breaking through to national prominence with the story "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog." Although the book's attention to detail can be overwhelming and even tiresome, Scharnhorst's thorough and careful research results in a scholarly biography that will undoubtedly be considered definitive. Photos. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
The transformation of newspaperman Samuel Clemens into popular essayist and entertainer Mark Twain.Although Twain (1835-1910) has been the subject of scores of biographies and studies, his life story has never been told, asserts Scharnhorst (Emeritus, English/Univ. of New Mexico; Owen Wister and the West, 2015, etc.), "from beginning to end from a single point of view on an expansive canvas." The author brings considerable authority and astute analysis to the first volume of his planned multivolume biography, drawing on Twain's writings, letters (more than 5,000 made available since Justin Kaplan's acclaimed biography of Twain was published in 1966), memoirs by Twain's contemporaries, and nearly everythingreviews, remarks, and scholarshipwritten about Twain. Although Scharnhorst admits that he has discovered no "bombshells" or "dark secrets," he offers a cleareyed, balanced portrait of the restless, irreverent, hard-drinking writer and lecturer who, no matter how much money he earned, seemed perpetually in debt. Twain worked for several newspapers after he gave up piloting on the Mississippi, with varying success. He was not well-liked by his colleagues on Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise, for example, recalled for being "a notoriously lazy grinder" who, when he should have been cranking out copy, instead sat "drumming on a cracked guitar." As a young man, he held decidedly racist views, which he "outgrew" after he moved to cosmopolitan San Francisco in 1865. As far as sex, "little is known," Scharnhorst asserts, although judging from some ribald writings, Twain "seems to have been thoroughly familiar with western bordellos" and may have been treated for venereal disease. Twain was an enthusiastic world traveler whose jaunts were funded by newspapers to which he contributed "letters" from abroad. He supplemented his income by performing as a "literary comedian" in the manner of renowned Artemus Ward, to whom he was often favorably compared. Scharnhorst ends his first volume with the publication of Twain's well-received The Innocents Abroad (1869), his marriage to the heiress Livy Langdon, and the birth of their son.A lively, richly detailed, and sharply perceptive biography. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Surveying the distortion-filled autobiography of his friend Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Dean Howells pronounced the work a failure for readers seeking truth. In this first volume of an ambitious multivolume biography of the famous novelist, Scharnhorst endeavors to succeed where Clemens/Twain failed. The autobiographical untruths Scharnhorst must clear away include even Clemens' account of how he chose his nom de plume: probing research reveals that Clemens drew the self-designation Mark Twain not (as he claimed) from river pilots navigating rapids but rather from saloon regulars requesting credit. Similar detective work explodes myths Clemens popularized about a near brush with General Grant as a Confederate militiaman and about arduous labors as a prospector during California's Gold Rush. Most readers, however, will value more highly the true account of the financial pressures catalyzing Clemens' first literary triumph Innocents Abroad. Scharnhorst details the strokes of satiric genius that shine through this work, alongside veins of plagiarism. Besides ferreting out truths Clemens himself concealed, Scharnhorst announces his intention to challenge the misleading perspectives of previous biographers including those academic specialists whose single-volume tomes deliver skeletal portraits of a robust figure. The signal achievement manifested in this volume will leave readers eagerly awaiting its sequels.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2018 Booklist
Choice Review
With this first volume in his trilogy, Scharnhorst (Univ. of New Mexico) revises and adds a tremendous amount of information to the myths associated with Twain's childhood, his flight from the Civil War, the fractious development of his moral/comic persona, and the expansion of his career. The narrative culminates in Twain's marriage to heiress Olivia Louise Langdon and the heartbreaking deaths of his father-in-law and his wife's close friend Emma Nye. Scharnhost's skepticism about the semifiction of Twain's own autobiography and the interpretations of earlier biographers makes this book unique. It piles alternate interpretations on each other and corrects and fleshes out the record with a vast amount of new research. The text is clear and points to details previously unknown or unnoticed, and the chronicle of the Nevada and California years is laced with Twain acerbic, roughhewn material, which reveals why his writings were not fit for eastern drawing rooms. Scharnhorst places in proper perspective, perhaps for the first time, the influence on Twain of Livy, Bret Harte, and other mentors/confidants. Scholars will find a wealth of new information; general readers will find many insights into the making of the author. The first volume of Scharnhorst's trilogy is, on its own, a landmark in Twain studies for this generation. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --David E. E. Sloane, University of New Haven
Library Journal Review
In 1912, two years after Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens, died, his literary -executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, published a hefty multivolume biography of the author. Since then, hundreds more books about Twain-including many full -biographies-have appeared. Until now, however, none has challenged the scope of Paine's epic work, despite the explosion of new information and proliferation of interpretations of Twain's genius. This first volume of a new three-volume work by noted Twain authority Scharnhorst (Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English; editor, Twain in His Own Time) is thus a welcome contribution to literary scholarship. While covering Twain's busy life through 1871-by which time he was married and settled-it offers a richly documented and often engaging account of his youth in Missouri; his steamboat piloting, prospecting, and newspaper reporting years; and the journeys to Hawaii and the Old World that made him famous and launched his writing career. While Paine's biography is justly criticized for being uncritical to the point of being fawning, Scharnhorst's book sometimes leans too far in the opposite direction and is occasionally marred by armchair psychoanalysis. VERDICT An authoritative and impressive achievement that promises well for -Scharnhorst's next two volumes. Recommended.-R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| List of Illustrations | p. xi |
| Preface | p. xiii |
| Prologue | p. xxxi |
| Chapter 1 Ancestry | p. 3 |
| Chapter 2 The Villages | p. 11 |
| Chapter 3 Hannibal | p. 35 |
| Chapter 4 Journeyman Printer | p. 75 |
| Chapter 5 The River | p. 97 |
| Chapter 6 The War | p. 129 |
| Chapter 7 The Mines | p. 139 |
| Chapter 8 Virginia City | p. 171 |
| Chapter 9 From Virginia City to San Francisco | p. 211 |
| Chapter 10 San Francisco | p. 259 |
| Chapter 11 The Sandwich Islands | p. 319 |
| Chapter 12 San Francisco Redux | p. 343 |
| Chapter 13 New York | p. 369 |
| Chapter 14 The Voyage | p. 403 |
| Chapter 15 Washington, D.C. | p. 439 |
| Chapter 16 The West Revisited | p. 461 |
| Chapter 17 Hartford, Elmira, and Buffalo | p. 471 |
| Chapter 18 Buffalo Exitus | p. 533 |
| Abbreviations | p. 563 |
| Notes | p. 565 |
| Bibliography | p. 617 |
| Index | p. 657 |
