Editing Mark Twain (section)

===Early journalism and travelogues===
Twain was writing for the Virginia City newspaper the ''[[Territorial Enterprise]]'' in 1863 when he met lawyer [[Thomas Fitch (politician)|Tom Fitch]], editor of the competing newspaper ''Virginia Daily Union'' and known as the "silver-tongued orator of the Pacific".<ref name=baskin>{{Cite book | last1 = Baskin | first1 = R. N. (Robert Newton) | last2 = Madsen | first2 = Brigham D. | title = Reminiscences of early Utah : with, Reply to certain statements by O. F. Whitne | year = 2006 | publisher = Signature Books | location = Salt Lake City | isbn = 978-1-56085-193-6 | page = 281 }}</ref>{{rp|51}} Twain credited Fitch with giving him his "first really profitable lesson" in writing. "When I first began to lecture, and in my earlier writings," Twain later commented, "my sole idea was to make comic capital out of everything I saw and heard."<ref name=henderson>{{cite book |last=Henderson |first=Archibald |year=1912 |title=Mark Twain |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/mtwphotoalvin00hendrich |chapter=The Humorist |page=[https://archive.org/details/mtwphotoalvin00hendrich/page/99 99] |publisher=Frederick A. Stokes Company |location=New York}}</ref> In 1866, he presented his lecture on the Sandwich Islands to a crowd in Washoe City, Nevada.<ref>{{cite book |title=Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates |editor= Gary Scharnhorst |page=290 |publisher= University of Iowa Press |edition= first |date= 2010 |isbn= 978-1-58729-914-8}}</ref><ref name=dequille>{{cite web |url=http://www.nevadaobserver.com/Reading%20Room%20Documents/reporting_with_mark_twain_1893.htm |title=Reporting With Mark Twain |first1=Dan |last1=DeQuille |first2=Mark |last2=Twain |publisher=The Californian Illustrated Magazine |date=July 1893 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110511113924/http://www.nevadaobserver.com/Reading%20Room%20Documents/reporting_with_mark_twain_1893.htm |archive-date=May 11, 2011 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> Afterwards, Fitch told him:
<blockquote>Clemens, your lecture was magnificent. It was eloquent, moving, sincere. Never in my entire life have I listened to such a magnificent piece of descriptive narration. But you committed one unpardonable sin&nbsp;– the unpardonable sin. It is a sin you must never commit again. You closed a most eloquent description, by which you had keyed your audience up to a pitch of the intensest interest, with a piece of atrocious anti-climax which nullified all the really fine effect you had produced.<ref name=henderson/></blockquote>

[[File:Mark Twain Cabin Exterior MVC-082X.jpg|thumb|left|Cabin where Twain wrote "Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", Jackass Hill, [[Tuolumne County, California|Tuolumne County]]. Click on [[:File:Mark Twain Cabin Marker (Close-up) MVC-068X.jpg|historical marker]] and [[:File:Mark Twain Cabin Interior MVC-073X.jpg|interior view]].]]
It was in these days that Twain became a writer of the [[Sagebrush School]]; he was known later as its most famous member.<ref name="unr.edu2009">{{cite web|url=http://knowledgecenter.unr.edu/libraries/support/writers_hof/sagebrushschool.html|title=The Sagebrush School Nevada Writers Hall of Fame 2009|date=October 28, 2009|publisher=[[University of Nevada, Reno]]|access-date=February 26, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140104204538/http://knowledgecenter.unr.edu/libraries/support/writers_hof/sagebrushschool.html|archive-date=January 4, 2014}}</ref> Twain's first important work was "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," published in the ''[[New York Saturday Press]]'' on November 18, 1865. After a burst of popularity, the ''[[Sacramento Union]]'' commissioned him to write letters about his travel experiences. The first journey that Twain took for this job was to ride the steamer ''Ajax'' on its maiden voyage to the [[Hawaiian Islands|Sandwich Islands]] (Hawaii). All the while, he was writing letters to the newspaper that were meant for publishing, chronicling his experiences with humor. These letters proved to be the genesis to Twain's work with the San Francisco ''[[The Daily Alta California|Alta California]]'' newspaper, which designated him a traveling correspondent for a trip from San Francisco to New York City via the [[Panama Canal|Panama isthmus]].

On June 8, 1867, Twain set sail on the pleasure cruiser ''Quaker City'' for five months, and this trip resulted in ''[[The Innocents Abroad|The Innocents Abroad or The New Pilgrims' Progress]]''. <!---hiding this quotation, as it serves no purpose here: {{quote|This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition it would have about it the gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet notwithstanding it is only a record of a picnic, it has a purpose, which is, to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how he ought to look at objects of interest beyond the sea&nbsp;– other books do that, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need.}}---> In 1872, he published his second piece of travel literature, ''Roughing It'', as an account of his journey from Missouri to Nevada, his subsequent life in the [[Western United States|American West]], and his visit to Hawaii. The book lampoons American and Western society in the same way that ''Innocents'' critiqued the various countries of Europe and the Middle East. Twain's next work was ''[[The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today]]'', his [[debut novel|first attempt at writing a novel]]. The book, written with Twain's neighbor [[Charles Dudley Warner]], is also his only collaboration.

Twain's next work drew on his experiences on the Mississippi River. ''[[Old Times on the Mississippi]]'' was a series of sketches published in the ''[[Atlantic Monthly]]'' in 1875 featuring his disillusionment with [[Romanticism]].<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=YaODPFP-1AQC&pg=PA29 Reading the American Novel 1865–1914] G. R. Thompson; John Wiley & Sons,  2012; 462 pages; p. 29</ref> ''Old Times'' eventually became the starting point for ''Life on the Mississippi''.