Editing Mark Twain

{{short description|American author and humorist (1835–1910)}}
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{{Infobox writer
| name             = Mark Twain
| image            = Mark Twain by AF Bradley.jpg
| caption          = Twain in 1907
| birth_name       = Samuel Langhorne Clemens
| birth_date       = {{birth date|mf=yes|1835|11|30}}
| birth_place      = [[Florida, Missouri]], U.S.
| death_date       = {{death date and age|mf=yes|1910|4|21|1835|11|30}}
| death_place      = [[Stormfield|Stormfield House]], [[Redding, Connecticut]], U.S.
| resting_place    = [[Woodlawn Cemetery (Elmira, New York)|Woodlawn Cemetery, Elmira, New York]], U.S.
| pseudonym        = {{cslist|Mark Twain|Josh|Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass}}
| occupation       = {{hlist|Writer|humorist|entrepreneur|publisher|lecturer}}
| language         = [[American English]]
| genres           = {{hlist|[[Adventure fiction]]|[[speculative fiction]]|[[travel literature|travelogue]]|[[opinion journalism]]|[[literary criticism]]|[[polemic]]|[[essay]]|[[autobiography]]|[[letter (message)|correspondence]]|[[public speech|oration]]}}
| movement         = [[American Realism]]
| years_active     = from 1863
| employer         = {{ubl|''[[Territorial Enterprise]]''|''[[The Sacramento Union]]''|''[[The Daily Alta California|The Alta California]]''|''[[New-York Tribune]]''}}
| spouse           = {{marriage |[[Olivia Langdon Clemens|Olivia Langdon]]|1870|1904|end=died}}
| children         = 4, including [[Susy Clemens|Susy]], [[Clara Clemens|Clara]], and [[Jean Clemens|Jean]]
| parents          = {{ubl|[[John Marshall Clemens]]|[[Jane Lampton Clemens]]}}
| relatives        = [[Orion Clemens]] (brother)
| signature        = Mark Twain Signatures-2.svg
}}

'''Samuel Langhorne Clemens''' (November 30, 1835&nbsp;– April 21, 1910),<ref name="housebio">{{cite web |url=http://www.marktwainhouse.org/man/biography_main.php |title= Biography of Mark Twain |access-date= October 28, 2017 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170603080445/https://www.marktwainhouse.org/man/biography_main.php |archive-date= June 3, 2017 |df= mdy-all }}</ref> known by the pen name '''Mark Twain''', was an American writer, [[humorist]], and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced,"<ref>{{Cite news |date=April 22, 1910 |title=Mark Twain is Dead at 74; End Comes Peacefully at His New England Home After a Long Illness. |work=[[The New York Times]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1910/04/22/archives/mark-twain-is-dead-at-74-end-comes-peacefully-at-his-new-england.html |access-date=August 28, 2023 |issn=0362-4331 |archive-date=August 28, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230828215541/https://www.nytimes.com/1910/04/22/archives/mark-twain-is-dead-at-74-end-comes-peacefully-at-his-new-england.html |url-status=live }}</ref> with [[William Faulkner]] calling him "the father of [[American literature]]."<ref name="faulkner">{{cite book |last=Jelliffe |first=Robert A. |title=Faulkner at Nagano |year=1956 |publisher=Kenkyusha, Ltd |location=Tokyo}}</ref> Twain's novels include ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]'' (1876) and its sequel, ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'' (1884),<ref>{{Cite book| title=World Book Encyclopedia| publisher=World Book, Inc.| year=1999|location=Chicago}}</ref> with the latter often called the "[[Great American Novel]]." He also wrote ''[[A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]'' (1889) and ''[[Pudd'nhead Wilson]]'' (1894) and cowrote ''[[The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today]]'' (1873) with [[Charles Dudley Warner]]. The novelist [[Ernest Hemingway]] claimed that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ''Huckleberry Finn''."<ref name="The American">{{cite news| title=Mark Twain: not an American but the American| last=Churchwell| first=Sarah| date=October 29, 2010| work=[[The Guardian]]| url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/30/mark-twain-american-sarah-churchwell}}</ref>

Twain was raised in [[Hannibal, Missouri]], which later provided the setting for both ''Tom Sawyer'' and ''Huckleberry Finn''. He served an apprenticeship with a printer early in his career, and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to his older brother [[Orion Clemens]]' newspaper. Twain then became a riverboat pilot on the [[Mississippi River]], which provided him the material for ''[[Life on the Mississippi]]'' (1883). Soon after, Twain headed west to join Orion in [[Nevada Territory|Nevada]]. He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the [[Virginia City, Nevada|Virginia City]] ''[[Territorial Enterprise]]''.<ref>Thomson, David, ''In Nevada: The Land, The People, God, and Chance'', New York: Vintage Books, 2000. {{ISBN|0-679-77758-X}} p. 35</ref>

Twain first achieved success as a writer with the humorous story "[[The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County]]," which was published in 1865; it was based on a story that he heard at [[Angels Hotel]] in [[Angels Camp, California]], where Twain had spent some time while he was working as a [[miner]]. The short story brought Twain international attention.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Jumping Frog: The Jumping Frog, in English, Then in French, Then Clawed Back Into a Civilized Language Once More by Patient, Unremunerated Toil|url=https://archive.org/details/jumpingfroginen01twaigoog|last=Twain|first=Mark|publisher=Harper & Brothers|year=1903|location=New York}}</ref> He wrote both fiction and non-fiction. As his fame grew, Twain became a much sought-after speaker. His wit and satire, both in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

Although Twain initially spoke out in favor of American interests in the [[Kingdom of Hawaii|Hawaiian Islands]], he later reversed his position,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Caron |first=James E. |date=2008 |title=The Blessings of Civilization: Mark Twain's Anti-Imperialism and the Annexation of the Hawai'ian Islands |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41582240 |journal=The Mark Twain Annual |issue=6 |pages=51–52 |jstor=41582240 |access-date=October 31, 2023 |archive-date=October 31, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231031070458/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41582240 |url-status=live }}</ref> going on to become vice president of the [[American Anti-Imperialist League]] from 1901 until his death in 1910, coming out strongly against the [[Philippine–American War]] and [[American imperialism|American colonialism]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Mark Twain – The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War |url=https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/twain.html |access-date=October 26, 2022 |website=Hispanic Division, Library of Congress |archive-date=October 26, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221026230403/https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/twain.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Stone |first1=Oliver |title=[[The Untold History of the United States]] |last2=Kuznick |first2=Peter |year=2013}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=Thurber |first=Dani |title=Research Guides: World of 1898: International Perspectives on the Spanish American War: Mark Twain |url=https://guides.loc.gov/world-of-1898/mark-twain |access-date=2023-10-31 |website=[[Library of Congress]] |language=en |quote=During the Spanish-American War, Twain became a fervent anti-imperialist, even joining the Anti-Imperialist League. His sentiments about the war and the war in the {{sic|Phillip|pines|nolink=y}} were published nationwide. |archive-date=October 31, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231031065108/https://guides.loc.gov/world-of-1898/mark-twain |url-status=live }}</ref> Twain published a satirical pamphlet, "[[King Leopold's Soliloquy]]", in 1905 about Belgian [[atrocities in the Congo Free State]].

Twain earned a great deal of money from his writing and lectures, but invested in ventures that lost most of it, such as the [[Paige Compositor]], a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its complexity and imprecision. He filed for [[bankruptcy]] in the wake of these financial setbacks, but in time overcame his financial troubles with the help of [[Standard Oil]] executive [[Henry Huttleston Rogers]]. Twain eventually paid all his creditors in full, even though his declaration of bankruptcy meant he was not required to do so. One hundred years after his death, the first volume of [[Autobiography of Mark Twain|his autobiography]] was published.<ref name="The American"/>

Twain was born shortly after an appearance of [[Halley's Comet]] and predicted that his death would accompany it as well, writing in 1909: "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835; it's coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It would be a great disappointment in my life if I don't. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'" He died of a heart attack the day after the comet was at its closest to the Sun.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Mark Twain's weird but perfect ending |url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/mark-twains-weird-but-perfect-ending| last=Markel| first=Howard |date=April 21, 2022 |access-date=July 2, 2023 |work=[[PBS News Hour]] |archive-date=July 2, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230702214446/https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/mark-twains-weird-but-perfect-ending |url-status=live }}</ref>

==Biography==
===Early life===
[[File:Mark Twain by GH Jones, 1850 - retouched.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Samuel Clemens, age 15 holding [[Sort (typesetting)|metal type]] in a [[composing stick]] that spells out his first name. He understood that the photographic printing process reversed the contents of an image in the same way backward moveable type was reversed in printing to give clear copy.]]
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, in [[Florida, Missouri]]. He was the sixth of seven children of [[Jane Lampton Clemens|Jane]] (''née'' Lampton; 1803–1890), a native of [[Kentucky]], and [[John Marshall Clemens]] (1798–1847), a native of [[Virginia]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Coplin |first=Keith |date=1970 |title=John and Sam Clemens: A Father's Influence |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41640872 |journal=Mark Twain Journal |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=1–6 |jstor=41640872 |issn=0025-3499 |access-date=June 4, 2024 |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605172508/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41640872 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Hoffman |first=Andrew |date=1997 |title=Inventing Mark Twain |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/inventingmarktwain.htm |access-date=2024-06-04 |website=www.washingtonpost.com |archive-date=December 9, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221209153135/https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/inventingmarktwain.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>

His parents met when his father, a lawyer called to the bar in Kentucky, tried to help Jane's father and uncle avoid bankruptcy.<ref name=Hoffman>{{cite book |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hoffman-twain.html |title=Inventing Mark Twain |first=Andrew J. |last=Hoffman |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170119152242/http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/hoffman-twain.html |year=1997 |publisher=William Morrow |isbn=978-0688127695|archive-date=January 19, 2017 }}</ref> They were married in 1823.<ref name="singular">{{cite book |last = Kaplan |first = Fred | author-link = Fred Kaplan (biographer) |title = The Singular Mark Twain |date=2007 |publisher = Doubleday |isbn = 978-0-385-47715-4 |chapter = 1: The Best Boy You Had 1835–1847}} Cited in {{cite web |url=http://classiclit.about.com/library/weekly/aafpr113003b.htm |title = Excerpt: ''The Singular Mark Twain'' |publisher = About.com: Literature: Classic |access-date = October 11, 2006 |archive-date = March 2, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060302091618/http://classiclit.about.com/library/weekly/aafpr113003b.htm |url-status = dead }}</ref> Twain was of [[English people|English]] and [[Ulster Scots people|Scots-Irish]] descent.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, Volume 41|author=Jeffrey L. (Ed) Egge|page=1}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Mark Twain's ancestor was "witchfinder general" in Belfast trial|url=http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/mark-twains-ancestor-was-witchfinder-general-during-belfast-witchcraft-trial-230973591-237786421.html|author=Michelle K Smith|date=December 31, 2014|access-date=April 16, 2015|archive-date=April 19, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150419025716/http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/mark-twains-ancestor-was-witchfinder-general-during-belfast-witchcraft-trial-230973591-237786421.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Transatlantic Renaissances: Literature of Ireland and the American South|author=Kathryn Stelmach Artuso|page=5}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Genealogy Volume 1–2; a weekly journal of American ancestry|author= Lyman Horace Weeks|page=202}}</ref> Only three of his siblings lived beyond childhood: [[Orion Clemens|Orion]] (1825–1897), Pamela (1827–1904), and Henry (1838–1858). His brother Pleasant Hannibal (1828) died at three weeks of age,<ref>{{Cite book|title=Mark Twain: A Life|url=https://archive.org/details/marktwainlife00powe_0|url-access=registration|last=Powers|first=Ron|publisher=Free Press|year=2006|isbn=9780743248990}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.marktwainhouse.org/man/clemens_family_tree.php|title=Welcome to the Mark Twain House & Museum – Clemens Family Tree|website=www.marktwainhouse.org|access-date=August 17, 2017|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170210081912/http://www.marktwainhouse.org/man/clemens_family_tree.php|archive-date=February 10, 2017}}</ref> his sister Margaret (1830–1839) died when Twain was three, and his brother Benjamin (1832–1842) died three years later.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fears |first=David H. |date=2005 |title=Mark Twain Day by Day: An Annotated Chronology of the Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens Volume 1 (1835–1856 and a sampler of 1880) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41641553 |journal=Mark Twain Journal |volume=43 |issue=1/2 |pages=1–114 |jstor=41641553 |issn=0025-3499 |access-date=June 4, 2024 |archive-date=June 4, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240604100739/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41641553 |url-status=live }}</ref>

When he was four, Twain's family moved to [[Hannibal, Missouri]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95nov/twain.html |title=Mark Twain, American Author and Humorist |access-date=October 25, 2006 |archive-date=October 29, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061029203544/http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95nov/twain.html |url-status=live }}</ref> a port town on the [[Mississippi River]] that inspired the fictional town of St.&nbsp;Petersburg in ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' and ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn''.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://encarta.msn.com/sidebar_701509634/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn_The.html |title=Adventures of Huckleberry Finn |access-date=November 11, 2006 |last=Lindborg |first=Henry J. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091028010000/http://encarta.msn.com/sidebar_701509634/Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn_The.html |archive-date=October 28, 2009 |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[History of slavery in Missouri|Slavery was legal in Missouri]] at the time, and it became a theme in these writings. His father was an attorney and judge who died of [[pneumonia]] in 1847, when Twain was only 11.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://shs.umsystem.edu/historicmissourians/name/c/clemens/ |title=John Marshall Clemens |publisher=State Historical Society of Missouri |access-date=October 29, 2007 |archive-date=September 23, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130923110634/http://shs.umsystem.edu/historicmissourians/name/c/clemens/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> The following year, Twain left school after the fifth grade to become a printer's apprentice.<ref name="housebio"/> In 1851, he began working as a [[typeset]]ter, contributing articles and humorous sketches to the ''[[Hannibal Journal]]'', a newspaper that Orion owned. When Twain was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in [[New York City]], [[Philadelphia]], [[St. Louis]], and [[Cincinnati]], joining the newly formed [[International Typographical Union]], the printers' [[trade union]]. Twain [[autodidact|educated himself]] in [[public library|public libraries]] in the evenings, finding wider information than at a conventional school.<ref>Philip S. Foner, ''Mark Twain: Social Critic'' (New York: International Publishers, 1958), p. 13, cited in Helen Scott's "The Mark Twain they didn't teach us about in school" (2000) in the ''[[International Socialist Review (1900)|International Socialist Review]]'' 10, Winter 2000, pp. 61–65, at [http://www.marxists.de/culture/twain/noteach.htm#n2] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020616093459/http://www.marxists.de/culture/twain/noteach.htm#n2|date=June 16, 2002}}</ref>

Twain describes his boyhood in ''[[Life on the Mississippi]]'', stating that "there was but one permanent ambition" among his comrades: to be a steamboatman. "Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary – from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay." As Twain described it, the pilot's prestige exceeded that of the captain. The pilot had to "get up a warm personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cottonwood and every obscure wood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve hundred miles; and more than that, must... actually know where these things are in the dark". [[Steamboat]] pilot [[Horace Ezra Bixby|Horace E. Bixby]] took Twain on as a cub pilot to teach him the river between [[New Orleans]] and St. Louis for $500 ({{Inflation|US|500|1858|fmt=eq|r=-3}}), payable out of Twain's first wages after graduating. Twain studied the Mississippi, learning its landmarks, how to navigate its currents effectively, and how to read the river and its constantly shifting channels, reefs, submerged snags, and rocks that would "tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated".<ref>Clemens, Samuel L. ''Life on the Mississippi'', pp. 32, 37, 45, 57, 78, Harper & Brothers, New York and London, 1917.</ref> It was more than two years before he received his pilot's license. Piloting also gave Twain his pen name from "[[Depth sounding#Terminology|mark twain]]", the [[Chains (nautical)|leadsman's cry]] for a measured river depth of two fathoms (12 feet), which was safe water for a steamboat.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.seatalk.info/cgi-bin/nautical-marine-sailing-dictionary/db.cgi?db=db&uid=default&FirstLetter=m&sb=Term&view_records=View+Records&nh=2|title=Nautical Dictionary, Glossary and Terms directory: Search Results|website=www.seatalk.info|access-date=August 17, 2017|archive-date=August 17, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170817202956/http://www.seatalk.info/cgi-bin/nautical-marine-sailing-dictionary/db.cgi?db=db&uid=default&FirstLetter=m&sb=Term&view_records=View+Records&nh=2|url-status=usurped}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.boatsafe.com/nauticalknowhow/marktwain.htm|title=What do Mark Twain and your depth sounder have in common?|website=www.boatsafe.com/index.html|access-date=September 10, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180623045650/http://boatsafe.com/nauticalknowhow/marktwain.htm|archive-date=June 23, 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref>

As a young pilot, Clemens served on the steamer ''A. B. Chambers'' with [[Grant Marsh]], who became famous for his exploits as a steamboat captain on the Missouri River. The two liked and admired each other, and maintained a correspondence for many years after Clemens left the river.<ref>Hanson, Joseph Mills. ''The Conquest of the Missouri: Being the Story of the Life and Exploits of Captain Grant Marsh,'' pp. 24–29, Murray Hill Books, Inc., New York and Toronto, 1909.</ref>

While training, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him, and even arranged a post of [[mud clerk]] for him on the steamboat ''[[Pennsylvania Steamboat|Pennsylvania]]''. On June 13, 1858, the steamboat's boiler exploded; Henry succumbed to his wounds eight days later. Twain claimed to have foreseen this death in a dream a month earlier,<ref name="autov1">{{cite book |title=Autobiography of Mark Twain: Volume 1 |editor-last=Smith |editor-first=Harriet Elinor |year=2010 |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |isbn=978-0-520-26719-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/autobiographyofm00twai_0 }}</ref>{{rp|275}} which inspired his interest in [[parapsychology]]; Twain was an early member of the [[Society for Psychical Research]].<ref>For a further account of Twain's involvement with parapsychology, see {{cite book |last=Blum |first=Deborah |title=Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death |publisher=Penguin Press |date=2006}}.</ref> Twain was guilt-stricken and held himself responsible for the rest of his life. Twain continued to work on the river and was a river pilot until the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] broke out in 1861, when traffic was curtailed along the Mississippi River.

At the start of hostilities, he enlisted briefly in a local [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] unit, the Marion Rangers as a Second Lieutenant.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2023/04/18/why-mark-twain-had-an-incredibly-brief-stint-as-a-confederate-soldier/ |title=Why Mark Twain had an incredibly brief stint as a Confederate soldier |work=Military Times |last=Barrett |first=Claire |date=April 18, 2023 |access-date=November 10, 2024}}</ref> Twain later wrote the sketch "[[The Private History of a Campaign That Failed]]", describing how he and his friends had been Confederate volunteers for two weeks before their unit disbanded.<ref name="Hannibal">{{cite web |title =Mark Twain Biography |publisher =The Hannibal Courier-Post |url =http://www.marktwainhannibal.com/twain/biography/ |access-date =November 25, 2008 |archive-date =November 20, 2008 |archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20081120213517/http://www.marktwainhannibal.com/twain/biography/ |url-status =live }}</ref>

Twain then left for Nevada to work for his brother Orion, who was Secretary of the [[Nevada Territory]]. Twain describes the episode in his book ''[[Roughing It]]''.<ref>Clemens, Samuel L. ''Roughing It'', p. 19, American Publishing Company, Hartford, CT, 1872. {{ISBN|0-87052-707-X}}.</ref><ref name="lemaster">{{cite book|first=J. R. |last=Lemaster|title=The Mark Twain Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zW1k-XS6XLEC&pg=PA147|year=1993|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0824072124}}</ref>{{Rp|147}}

===In the American West===
[[File:Mark Twain by Abdullah Frères, 1867.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Twain, age 31]]
Orion became secretary to [[Nevada Territory]] governor [[James W. Nye]] in 1861, and Twain joined him when he moved west. The brothers traveled more than two weeks on a [[stagecoach]] across the [[Great Plains]] and the [[Rocky Mountains]], visiting the [[Mormon pioneers|Mormon community]] in [[Salt Lake City]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Powell |first1=Allan Kent |title=Mark Twain's Utah |date=April 22, 2016 |url=https://historytogo.utah.gov/mark-twains-utah/ |publisher=Utah Division of State History |access-date=November 7, 2022 |archive-date=November 7, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221107145433/https://historytogo.utah.gov/mark-twains-utah/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Twain's journey ended in the silver-mining town of [[Virginia City, Nevada]], where he became a [[mining|miner]] on the [[Comstock Lode]].<ref name="Hannibal"/> Twain failed as a miner and went to work at the Virginia City newspaper ''[[Territorial Enterprise]]'',<ref>''Comstock Commotion: The Story of the Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News'', Chapter 2.</ref> working under a friend, the writer [[Dan DeQuille]]. Twain first used his pen name here on February 3, 1863, when he wrote a humorous [[travel literature|travel account]] titled "Letter From Carson&nbsp;– re: Joe Goodman; party at Gov.&nbsp;Johnson's; music" and signed it "Mark Twain".<ref name=MT_quotes>{{cite web |title = Mark Twain quotations |url = http://www.twainquotes.com/teindex.html |access-date = January 3, 2007 |archive-date = August 13, 2021 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210813091643/http://www.twainquotes.com/teindex.html |url-status = live }}</ref><ref>For further information, see [[Mark Twain in Nevada]].</ref>

Twain's experiences in the [[Western United States|American West]] inspired ''Roughing It'', written during 1870–71 and published in 1872.<ref>{{Citation |last=Messent |first=Peter |title=Roughing It and the American West |date=1997 |work=Mark Twain |pages=44–64 |editor-last=Messent |editor-first=Peter |url=https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25271-8_3 |access-date=2024-06-04 |place=London |publisher=Macmillan Education UK |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-25271-8_3 |isbn=978-1-349-25271-8}}</ref> His experiences in Angels Camp (in Calaveras County, California) provided material for "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865).<ref>{{Cite web |date=2015-05-14 |title=Great Read: The frog that jump-started Mark Twain's career |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/great-reads/la-et-c1-mark-twain-california-20150514-story.html |access-date=2024-06-04 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US |archive-date=October 12, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191012152236/https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/great-reads/la-et-c1-mark-twain-california-20150514-story.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Cuff |first=Roger Penn |date=1952 |title=Mark Twain's Use of California Folklore in His Jumping Frog Story |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/536886 |journal=The Journal of American Folklore |volume=65 |issue=256 |pages=155–158 |doi=10.2307/536886 |jstor=536886 |issn = 0021-8715}}</ref>

Twain moved to [[San Francisco]] in 1864, still as a journalist, and met writers such as [[Bret Harte]] and [[Artemus Ward]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kamiya |first=Gary |date=October 9, 2015 |orig-date=October 9, 2015 |title=How Mark Twain got fired in San Francisco |url=https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/How-Mark-Twain-got-fired-in-San-Francisco-6562309.php |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181212234554/https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/How-Mark-Twain-got-fired-in-San-Francisco-6562309.php |archive-date=December 12, 2018 |access-date=August 22, 2024 |website=The San Francisco Chronicle}}</ref> He may have been romantically involved with the poet [[Ina Coolbrith]].<ref>{{cite book|publisher=The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco|author=Dickson, Samuel|url=http://www.sfmuseum.org/bio/isadora.html|title=Isadora Duncan (1878–1927)|access-date=July 9, 2009|archive-date=June 29, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170629233522/http://www.sfmuseum.org/bio/isadora.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

Twain's first success as a writer came when his humorous [[tall tale]] "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was published on November 18, 1865, in the New York weekly ''[[The Saturday Press (literary newspaper)|The Saturday Press]]'', bringing him national attention. A year later, Twain traveled to the [[Hawaiian Islands|Sandwich Islands]] (present-day Hawaii) as a reporter for the ''[[Sacramento Union]]''. His letters to the ''Union'' were popular and became the basis for his first lectures.<ref name="PBS">{{cite web |title =Samuel Clemens |publisher =PBS:The West |url =https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/clemens.htm |access-date =August 25, 2007 |archive-date =September 11, 2007 |archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20070911181827/http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/clemens.htm |url-status =live }}</ref>

In 1867, local newspapers
''[[The Daily Alta California|The Alta California]]'' and ''[[New-York Tribune]]'' funded Twain's trip to the [[Mediterranean Sea|Mediterranean]] aboard the ''Quaker City'', including a tour of Europe and the Middle East. He wrote a collection of travel letters which were later compiled as ''[[The Innocents Abroad]]'' (1869). It was on this trip that Twain met fellow passenger Charles Langdon, who showed him a picture of his sister [[Olivia Langdon Clemens|Olivia]]. Twain later claimed to have [[Love at first sight|fallen in love at first sight]].<ref>{{cite news|last1=Gunderman|first1=Richard|title=Mark Twain's adventures in love: How a rough-edged aspiring author courted a beautiful heiress|url=https://theconversation.com/mark-twains-adventures-in-love-how-a-rough-edged-aspiring-author-courted-a-beautiful-heiress-90739|access-date=February 12, 2018|work=[[The Conversation (website)|The Conversation]]|date=February 12, 2018|archive-date=February 12, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180212135805/http://theconversation.com/mark-twains-adventures-in-love-how-a-rough-edged-aspiring-author-courted-a-beautiful-heiress-90739|url-status=live}}</ref>

Upon returning to the United States, Twain was offered honorary membership in [[Yale University]]'s secret society [[Scroll and Key]] in 1868.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EWvU21-vV8EC&pg=PA281|title=Mark Twain's Letters: 1867–1868|author1=Mark Twain |author2=Edgar Marquess Branch |author3=Michael B. Frank |author4=Kenneth M. Sanderson |publisher=University of California Press |year=1990|isbn=978-0520906075}}</ref>

===Marriage and children===
[[File:Mark Twain 1871-02-07.jpg|thumb|right|(From l. to r.) American Civil War correspondent and author [[George Alfred Townsend]], Mark Twain and David Gray, editor of the rival ''[[Buffalo Courier-Express|Buffalo Courier]]''<ref name="MTP-Gray"/>]]
[[File:Mark Twain House and Museum 2007.jpg|thumb|right|[[Twain House]] in Hartford, Connecticut]]

Twain and [[Olivia Langdon]] corresponded throughout 1868. She rejected his first marriage proposal, but Twain continued to court her and managed to overcome her father's initial reluctance.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Concerning Mark Twain|journal=The Week: A Canadian Journal of Politics, Literature, Science and Arts|date=February 14, 1884|volume=1|issue=11|page=171|url=https://archive.org/stream/weekcanadianjour01toro#page/n86/mode/1up|access-date=April 26, 2013}}</ref> They were married in [[Elmira, New York]], in February 1870.<ref name="PBS"/> She came from a "wealthy but liberal family"; through her, Twain met [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionists]], "socialists, principled atheists and activists for [[women's rights]] and [[social equality]]", including [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]], [[Frederick Douglass]], and [[utopian socialism|utopian socialist]] writer [[William Dean Howells]],<ref name="helen-scott">{{Cite journal |last=Scott |first=Helen |title=The Mark Twain They Didn't Teach Us About in School |journal=International Socialist Review |volume=10 |date=Winter 2000 |pages=61–65 |url=http://www.marxists.de/culture/twain/noteach.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190616051030/http://www.marxists.de/culture/twain/noteach.htm|archive-date=June 16, 2019}}</ref> who became a long-time friend. The Clemenses lived in [[Buffalo, New York]], from 1869 to 1871. Twain owned a stake in the ''[[Buffalo Courier-Express|Buffalo Express]]'' newspaper and worked as an editor and writer.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Dlugosz |first1=Steve |title=Mark Twain's experience in Buffalo described as brief but memorable |url=http://ampoleagle.com/mark-twains-experience-in-buffalo-described-as-brief-but-memorable-p10010-1.htm |access-date=December 18, 2020 |work=The Am-Pol Eagle |date=May 27, 2020 |archive-date=May 27, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210527122731/http://ampoleagle.com/mark-twains-experience-in-buffalo-described-as-brief-but-memorable-p10010-1.htm |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="MTP-Gray">{{cite web |title=David Gray biography |url=https://www.marktwainproject.org/biographies/bio_gray_david.html |website=Mark Twain Project |access-date=December 18, 2020 |archive-date=February 1, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210201194301/https://www.marktwainproject.org/biographies/bio_gray_david.html |url-status=live }}</ref> While they were living in Buffalo, their son Langdon died of [[diphtheria]] in 1872 at the age of 19&nbsp;months. They had three daughters: [[Susy Clemens|Susy]] (1872–1896), [[Clara Clemens|Clara]] (1874–1962),<ref>{{cite news |title=Mrs. Jacques Samossoud Dies; Mark Twain's Last Living Child; Released 'Letters From Earth' |quote=San Diego, Nov. 20 (UPI) Mrs. Clara Langhorne Clemens Samossoud, the last living child of Mark Twain, died last night in Sharp Memorial Hospital. She was 88 years old. |newspaper=The New York Times |date=November 21, 1962}}</ref> and [[Jean Clemens|Jean]] (1880–1909). The Clemenses formed a friendship with David Gray, who worked as an editor of the rival ''[[Buffalo Courier-Express|Buffalo Courier]]'', and his wife Martha. Twain later wrote that the Grays were {{"'}}all the solace' he and Livy had during their 'sorrowful and pathetic brief sojourn in Buffalo{{'"}}, and that Gray's "delicate gift for poetry" was wasted working for a newspaper.<ref name="MTP-Gray"/>

Starting in 1873, Twain moved his family to [[Hartford, Connecticut]], where he arranged the building of [[Mark Twain House|a home]] next door to Stowe. In the 1870s and 1880s, the family summered at [[Quarry Farm]] in Elmira, the home of Olivia's sister, Susan Crane.<ref name=Elmira>{{cite web |url=http://www.elmira.edu/academics/programs/Center_Twain/Quarry_Farm.html |title=Twain's Home in Elmira |publisher=[[Elmira College]] Center for Mark Twain Studies |access-date=May 1, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140729000450/http://www.elmira.edu/academics/programs/Center_Twain/Quarry_Farm.html |archive-date=July 29, 2014 }}</ref><ref name=Cresset>{{cite web |url=http://www.valpo.edu/cresset/2010/Advent/Bush_A10.html |title=A Week at Quarry Farm |author=Hal Bush |publisher=The Cresset, A review of literature, the arts, and public affairs, [[Valparaiso University]] |date=Christmas 2010 |access-date=May 1, 2011}}</ref> In 1874,<ref name=Elmira/> Susan had a study built, an octagonal gazebo set apart from the main house, as a surprise to Twain so that he would have a quiet place in which to write and enjoy his cigars.<ref>{{Cite web |title=An Interview with Mark Twain |url=https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2019/04/an-interview-with-mark-twain.html |access-date=2024-06-04 |website=Library of America |archive-date=June 4, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240604110913/https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2019/04/an-interview-with-mark-twain.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last=Lowe |first=Hilary Iris |title=Mark Twain Sites |date=2020 |work=Mark Twain in Context |pages=354–362 |editor-last=Bird |editor-first=John |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/mark-twain-in-context/mark-twain-sites/CF6BA4928D0CBAAB339BA3D12D0C4826 |access-date=2024-06-04 |series=Literature in Context |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-47260-9}}</ref>

Twain wrote many of his classic novels during his 17 years in Hartford (1874–1891) and over 20 summers at Quarry Farm. They include ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' (1876), ''[[The Prince and the Pauper]]'' (1881), ''Life on the Mississippi'' (1883), ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (1884), and ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' (1889).<ref>{{Cite news |last=Mitgang |first=Herbert |date=1985-04-28 |title=1985: A very good year to celebrate Mark Twain |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/28/books/1985-a-very-good-year-to-celebrate-mark-twain.html |access-date=2024-06-04 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331 |archive-date=June 4, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240604111620/https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/28/books/1985-a-very-good-year-to-celebrate-mark-twain.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Murray |first=Jeff |date=2024-05-15 |title=Quarry Farm, Mark Twain's Elmira summer home, nets major grant. How money will be used. |url=https://www.stargazette.com/story/news/local/2024/05/15/mark-twains-elmira-summer-home-gets-grant-for-fire-suppression-system/73698402007/ |access-date=2024-06-04 |website=Star-Gazette |language=en-US |archive-date=June 4, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240604111614/https://www.stargazette.com/story/news/local/2024/05/15/mark-twains-elmira-summer-home-gets-grant-for-fire-suppression-system/73698402007/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

The couple's marriage lasted 34 years until Olivia's death in 1904.<ref>{{Cite news |date=1904-06-24 |title=Headline announces the death of Olivia Langdon, wife of Mark Twain |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-mitchell-capital-headline-announces/26227663/ |access-date=2024-06-04 |work=The Mitchell Capital |pages=12 |archive-date=June 4, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240604103406/https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-mitchell-capital-headline-announces/26227663/ |url-status=live }}</ref> All of the Clemens family are buried in Elmira's [[Woodlawn Cemetery (Elmira, New York)|Woodlawn Cemetery]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Jamieson |first=Bob |date=2015-09-15 |title=Mark Twain gets his plaque back in Elmira cemetery |url=https://www.stargazette.com/story/news/2015/09/14/mark-twain-plaque-woodlawn-elmira-restored/72261012/ |access-date=2024-06-04 |website=Star-Gazette |language=en-US |archive-date=June 4, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240604103409/https://www.stargazette.com/story/news/2015/09/14/mark-twain-plaque-woodlawn-elmira-restored/72261012/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Selby |first=P.O. |date=1977 |title=The Langdon-Clemens Grave Plot |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41641056 |journal=Mark Twain Journal |volume=18 |issue=4 |pages=19–20 |jstor=41641056 |issn=0025-3499 |access-date=June 4, 2024 |archive-date=June 4, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240604103407/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41641056 |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Love of science and technology===
[[File:Twain in Tesla's Lab.jpg|thumb|Twain in the laboratory of [[Nikola Tesla]], early 1894]]
[[File:Mark Twain at Stormfield (1909).webm|thumb|right|thumbtime=0:50|[[:File:Mark Twain at Stormfield (1909).webm|''Mark Twain at Stormfield'']] (1909)]]

Twain was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He developed a close and lasting friendship with [[Nikola Tesla]], and the two spent much time together in Tesla's laboratory.<ref>{{cite web |title=Unexpected Futurist: Mark Twain, Tesla, and a Vision of a Worldwide Visual Telephone System The 2030 Team |url=https://medium.com/@paul_75346/unexpected-futurist-mark-twain-tesla-and-a-vision-of-a-worldwide-visual-telephone-system-46dff6759789 |website=Medium |date=April 22, 2020 |access-date=July 7, 2023 |archive-date=July 10, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230710081234/https://medium.com/@paul_75346/unexpected-futurist-mark-twain-tesla-and-a-vision-of-a-worldwide-visual-telephone-system-46dff6759789 |url-status=live }}</ref>
Twain patented three inventions, including an "Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments" (to replace [[suspenders]]) and a history trivia game.<ref name=USPTO>{{cite web |url=https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/news-updates/mark-twain-granted-his-first-patent-december-19-1871|title=Mark Twain Granted His First Patent on December 19, 1871 |publisher=[[United States Patent and Trademark Office]]|date=December 18, 2001|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201016162108/https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/news-updates/mark-twain-granted-his-first-patent-december-19-1871|archive-date=October 16, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book | last=Niemann | first=Paul J. | title=Invention Mysteries (Invention Mysteries Series) | date= 2004| publisher=Horsefeathers Publishing Company | isbn=0-9748041-0-X | pages=53–54 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TFjBk0tn9A4C&pg=PA52}}</ref> Most commercially successful was a self-pasting scrapbook; a dried adhesive on the pages needed only to be moistened before use.<ref name=USPTO/> More than 25,000 were sold.<ref name=USPTO/>

Twain made fun of the map making process in his "Map of Paris" from 1870.<ref>{{Cite web |date=1870 |title=Mark Twain's Map of Paris [explanation] |url=https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:19343172 |access-date=2025-03-26 |website=digital.library.cornell.edu |language=en}}</ref>

Twain was an early proponent of [[fingerprint]]ing as a forensic technique, featuring it in a [[tall tale]] in ''[[Life on the Mississippi]]'' (1883) and as a central plot element in the novel ''[[Pudd'nhead Wilson]]'' (1894).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Rutten |first=Tim |date=2008-10-18 |title=The LAPD flunks fingerprinting |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-oct-18-oe-rutten18-story.html |access-date=2024-06-05 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605040345/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-oct-18-oe-rutten18-story.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Preschel |first=Dr Lewis |date=2011-06-06 |title=Fingerprints 103: Mark Twain's Prescience and Crime's Penmen |url=https://www.criminalelement.com/fingerprints-103-mark-twains-prescience-and-crimes-penmen/ |access-date=2024-06-05 |website=Criminal Element |language=en-US |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605040349/https://www.criminalelement.com/fingerprints-103-mark-twains-prescience-and-crimes-penmen/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Twain's novel ''[[A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]'' (1889) features a [[time travel]]er from the contemporary U.S., using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to [[King Arthur|Arthurian]] England. This type of historical manipulation became a trope of speculative fiction as [[alternate history|alternate histories]].<ref>{{Citation |last=Carver |first=Ben |title=Earliness and Lateness: Alternate History in American Literature |date=2017 |work=Alternate Histories and Nineteenth-Century Literature: Untimely Meditations in Britain, France, and America |pages=207–259 |editor-last=Carver |editor-first=Ben |url=https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57334-6_6 |access-date=2024-06-05 |place=London |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |language=en |doi=10.1057/978-1-137-57334-6_6 |isbn=978-1-137-57334-6}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Collins |first=William J. |date=1986 |title=Hank Morgan in the Garden of Forking Paths: "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" as Alternative History |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26281854 |journal=Modern Fiction Studies |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=109–114 |jstor=26281854 |issn=0026-7724 |access-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605040827/https://www.jstor.org/stable/26281854 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1909, [[Thomas Edison]] visited Twain at [[Stormfield]], his home in [[Redding, Connecticut]], and filmed him. Part of the footage was used in ''The Prince and the Pauper'' (1909), a two-reel short film. It is the only known existing film footage of Twain.<ref>{{Citation|title=The Only Footage of Mark Twain in Existence|publisher=Smithsonian.com|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-only-footage-of-mark-twain-in-existence-13605003/access-date=April 13, 2024|archive-date=January 16, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170116152007/http://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/arts-culture/the-only-footage-of-mark-twain-in-existence/|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Financial troubles===
Twain made a substantial amount of money through his writing, but he lost a great deal through investments. Twain invested mostly in new inventions and technology, particularly the [[Paige Compositor|Paige typesetting machine]]. It was considered a mechanical marvel that amazed viewers when it worked, but it was prone to breakdowns. Twain spent $300,000 ({{Inflation|US|300000|1880|fmt=eq|r=0}}) on it between 1880 and 1894,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.marktwainhouse.org/themuseum/archivist.shtml |title=Mark Twain House website – Paige Compositor page |publisher=Marktwainhouse.org |access-date=December 30, 2010 |archive-date=September 19, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080919131459/http://www.marktwainhouse.org/themuseum/archivist.shtml |url-status=live }}</ref> but before it could be perfected it was rendered obsolete by the [[Linotype machine|Linotype]]. He lost the bulk of his book profits, as well as a substantial portion of his wife's inheritance.<ref name="c-a-kirk">{{Cite book |last=Kirk |first=Connie Ann |author-link = Connie Ann Kirk |title=Mark Twain&nbsp;– A Biography |location=Connecticut |publisher=Greenwood Printing |year=2004 |isbn=0-313-33025-5 }}</ref>

Twain also lost money through his publishing house, [[Charles L. Webster and Company]], which enjoyed initial success selling the [[Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant|memoirs]] of [[Ulysses S. Grant]] but failed soon afterward, losing money on a biography of [[Pope Leo XIII]]. Fewer than 200 copies were sold.<ref name="c-a-kirk" />

Twain and his family closed down their expensive Hartford home in response to the dwindling income and moved to Europe in June 1891. [[William M. Laffan]] of ''[[The Sun (New York)|The New York Sun]]'' and the [[McClure Newspaper Syndicate]] offered him the publication of a series of six European letters. Twain, Olivia, and their daughter Susy were all faced with health problems, and they believed that it would be of benefit to visit European baths.<ref name="paine">{{cite web |url=http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/twain/mark/paine/complete.html |title=Mark Twain, A Biography |author=Albert Bigelow Paine |date=December 17, 2014 |website=eBooks@Adelaide  |access-date=November 25, 2014 |archive-date=March 19, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190319130842/https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/twain/mark/paine/complete.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>{{Rp|175}} The family stayed mainly in France, Germany, and Italy until May 1895, with longer spells at [[Berlin]] (winter 1891–92), [[Florence]] (fall and winter 1892–93), and Paris (winters and springs 1893–94 and 1894–95). During that period, Twain returned to New York four times due to his enduring business troubles. Twain rented "a cheap room" in September 1893 at $1.50 per day ({{Inflation|US|1.5|1893|fmt=eq|r=0}}) at [[The Players (New York City)|The Players Club]], which he had to keep until March 1894; meanwhile, Twain became "the Belle of New York", in the words of biographer [[Albert Bigelow Paine]].<ref name="paine" />{{Rp|176–190}}

Twain's writings and lectures enabled him to recover financially, combined with the help of his friend [[Henry Huttleston Rogers]].<ref>Lauber, John. ''The Inventions of Mark Twain: a Biography''. New York: Hill and Wang, 1990.</ref> In 1893, Twain began a friendship with the financier, a principal of [[Standard Oil]], that lasted the remainder of his life. Rogers first made Twain file for bankruptcy in April 1894, then had him transfer the copyrights on his written works to his wife to prevent creditors from gaining possession of them. Finally, Rogers took absolute charge of Twain's money until all his creditors were paid.<ref name="paine" />{{Rp|188}}

Twain accepted an offer from [[Robert Sparrow Smythe]]<ref name=adb>
{{Australian Dictionary of Biography
 |first=M. |last=Shillingsburg
 |title=Smythe, Robert Sparrow (1833–1917)
 |id2=smythe-robert-sparrow-8568
 |access-date=August 30, 2013}}</ref> and embarked on a year-long around-the-world lecture tour in July 1895<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.twainquotes.com/SpeechIndex.html |title=Chronology of Known Mark Twain Speeches, Public Readings, and Lectures |author=Barbara Schmidt |publisher=marktwainquotes.com |access-date=February 7, 2010 |archive-date=August 9, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230809042844/http://www.twainquotes.com/SpeechIndex.html |url-status=live }}</ref> to pay off his creditors in full, although Twain was no longer under any legal obligation to do so.<ref>Cox, James M. ''Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor''. Princeton University Press, 1966.</ref> It was a long, arduous journey, and he was sick much of the time, mostly from a cold and a [[carbuncle]]. The first part of the itinerary took Twain across northern America to [[British Columbia]], Canada, until the second half of August. For the second part, he sailed across the Pacific Ocean. Twain's scheduled lecture in [[Honolulu]], Hawaii, had to be canceled due to a cholera epidemic.<ref name="paine" />{{Rp|188}}<ref>{{cite book
|title=Critical Companion to Mark Twain: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work
|last=Rasmussen
|first=R. Kent
|year=2007
|publisher=Facts on File
|location=New York
|isbn=978-0-8160-6225-6
|page =723}}</ref> Twain went on to [[Fiji]], Australia, New Zealand, [[Sri Lanka]], India, [[Mauritius]], and South Africa. His three months in India became the centerpiece of his 712-page book ''[[Following the Equator]]''. In the second half of July 1896, Twain sailed back to England, completing his circumnavigation of the world begun 14 months before.<ref name="paine" />{{Rp|188}}

Twain and his family spent four more years in Europe, mainly in England and Austria (October 1897 to May 1899), with longer spells in London and [[Vienna]]. Clara had wished to study the piano under [[Theodor Leschetizky]] in Vienna.<ref name="paine" />{{Rp|192–211}}
However, Jean's health did not benefit from consulting with specialists in Vienna, the "City of Doctors".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Mark Twain and Medicine: "Any Mummery Will Cure"|url=https://archive.org/details/marktwainmedicin00ober|url-access=limited|last=Ober|first=Patrick|publisher=University of Missouri Press|year=2003|location=Columbia|page=[https://archive.org/details/marktwainmedicin00ober/page/n179 157]|isbn=9780826215024}}</ref> The family moved to London in spring 1899, following a lead by [[Poultney Bigelow]], who had a good experience being treated by Dr. Jonas Henrik Kellgren, a Swedish [[Osteopathy|osteopathic]] practitioner in [[Belgravia]]. They were persuaded to spend the summer at Kellgren's [[sanatorium]] by the lake in the [[Sweden|Swedish]] village of Sanna. Coming back in fall, they continued the treatment in London, until Twain was convinced by lengthy inquiries in America that similar osteopathic expertise was available there.<ref>{{cite book
|title=Mark Twain and Medicine: Any Mummery Will Cure
|url=https://archive.org/details/marktwainmedicin00ober
|url-access=limited
|last=Ober
|first=K. Patrick
|year=2003
|publisher=[[University of Missouri Press]]
|location=Columbia
|isbn=0-8262-1502-5
|pages = [https://archive.org/details/marktwainmedicin00ober/page/n175 153]–161}}</ref>

In mid-1900, Twain was the guest of newspaper proprietor [[Hugh Gilzean-Reid]] at [[Dollis Hill House]], located on the north side of London. Twain wrote that he had "never seen any place that was so satisfactorily situated, with its noble trees and stretch of country, and everything that went to make life delightful, and all within a biscuit's throw of the metropolis of the world."<ref name=dollishill>{{cite news |url=http://www.dollishillhouse.org.uk/history.htm |title=History of Dollis Hill House |publisher=Dollis Hill House Trust |year=2006 |access-date=July 3, 2007 |archive-date=May 11, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080511142223/http://www.dollishillhouse.org.uk/history.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> Twain then returned to America in October 1900, having earned enough to pay off his debts. In winter 1900/01, Twain became his country's most prominent [[#Imperialism|opponent of imperialism]], raising the issue in his speeches, interviews, and writings. In January 1901, Twain began serving as vice-president of the [[American Anti-Imperialist League|Anti-Imperialist League]] of New York.<ref>{{cite book
|title=A Historical Guide to Mark Twain
|url=https://archive.org/details/historicalguidet00fish
|url-access=limited
|last=Zwick
|first=Jim
|editor=Shelley Fisher Fishkin
|editor1-link=Shelley Fisher Fishkin
|year=2002
|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]
|location=New York
|isbn=-0-19-513293-9
|chapter=Mark Twain and Imperialism
|pages = [https://archive.org/details/historicalguidet00fish/page/n248 240]–241}}</ref><ref name=":2" />

===Speaking engagements===
[[File:Sydney writers walk mark twain.jpg|thumb|Plaque on [[Sydney Writers Walk]] commemorating the visit of Twain in 1895]]
Twain was in great demand as a featured speaker, performing solo humorous talks similar to modern stand-up comedy.<ref>Judith Yaross Lee, "Mark Twain as a Stand-up Comedian", ''The Mark Twain Annual'' (2006) No. 4 pp.&nbsp;3–23. {{doi|10.1111/j.1756-2597.2006.tb00038.x}}</ref> He gave paid talks to many men's clubs, including the [[Authors' Club]], [[Beefsteak Club]], Vagabonds, [[White Friars]], and Monday Evening Club of Hartford.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Popova |first=Maria |date=2013-05-17 |title=Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling Critique the Media |url=https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/05/17/mark-twain-and-rudyard-kipling-critique-the-press/ |access-date=2024-06-05 |website=The Marginalian |language=en-US |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605041953/https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/05/17/mark-twain-and-rudyard-kipling-critique-the-press/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Davies |first=David Stuart |date=2020-08-28 |title=David Stuart Davies takes a look at Mark Twain |url=https://wordsworth-editions.com/mark-twain/ |access-date=2024-06-05 |website=Wordsworth Editions |language=en-GB |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605041954/https://wordsworth-editions.com/mark-twain/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title= Mark Twain, a Biography| volume =II Part 2 1886-1900|page =108 |url=https://mark-twain.classic-literature.co.uk/mark-twain-a-biography-volume-ii-part-2-1886-1900/ebook-page-108.asp |access-date=2024-06-05 |website=mark-twain.classic-literature.co.uk |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605041953/https://mark-twain.classic-literature.co.uk/mark-twain-a-biography-volume-ii-part-2-1886-1900/ebook-page-108.asp |url-status=live }}</ref>

In the late 1890s, Twain spoke to the [[Savage Club]] in London and was elected an honorary member. He was told that only three men had been so honored, including the [[Edward VII of the United Kingdom|Prince of Wales]], and Twain replied: "Well, it must make the Prince feel mighty fine."<ref name="paine"/>{{Rp|197}} He visited [[Melbourne]] and [[Sydney]] in 1895 as part of a world lecture tour. In 1897, Twain spoke to the Concordia Press Club in Vienna as a special guest, following the diplomat [[Charlemagne Tower, Jr.]] He delivered the speech "''[[The Awful German Language|Die Schrecken der Deutschen Sprache]]''" ("The Horrors of the German Language")—in German—to the great amusement of the audience.<ref name="lemaster"/>{{Rp|50}} In 1901, Twain was invited to speak at [[Princeton University]]'s [[American Whig-Cliosophic Society|Cliosophic Literary Society]], where he was made an honorary member.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.twainquotes.com/19010510.html |title=Mark Twain at Princeton |publisher=Twainquotes.com |access-date=December 7, 2013 |archive-date=May 23, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130523063020/http://www.twainquotes.com/19010510.html |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1906, he testified in front of a [[United States Congress|Congressional]] [[Joint committee (legislative)|joint committee]] in favor of a bill that would extend the [[History of copyright law of the United States#Failed bill of rights provision|length of protection for a copyright]] to lifetime of the author plus 50 years, stating "I think that will satisfy any reasonable author, because it will take care of his children. Let the grandchildren take care of themselves."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Madsen |first=Annelise |date=March 2009 |title=Dressing the Part: Mark Twain's White Suit, Copyright Reform, and the Camera |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/200598627 |journal=The Journal of American Culture |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=53–71 |doi=10.1111/j.1542-734X.2009.00693.x |id={{ProQuest|200598627 }} }}</ref>

====Canadian visits====
In 1881, Twain was honored at a banquet in [[Montreal]], Canada where he made reference to securing a [[copyright]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Mark Twain in Montreal|url=http://www.twainquotes.com/18811210.html|website=twainquotes.com|publisher=The New York Times|access-date=January 2, 2017|ref=tq|archive-date=May 9, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080509081234/http://www.twainquotes.com/18811210.html|url-status=live}}</ref> In 1883, Twain paid a brief visit to [[Ottawa]],<ref name="mtj"/> and he visited [[Toronto]] twice in 1884 and 1885 on a reading tour with [[George Washington Cable]], known as the "Twins of Genius" tour.<ref name="mtj">{{cite journal|last1=Roberts|first1=Taylor|title=Mark Twain in Toronto, Ontario, 1884–1885|jstor=41641453|journal=Mark Twain Journal|volume=36|issue=2|pages=18–25|year=1998}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=The Genial Mark|url=http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/huckfinn/twintur11.html|website=University of Virginia Library|publisher=Toronto Globe|access-date=January 2, 2017|ref=uva|archive-date=January 19, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170119152244/http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/huckfinn/twintur11.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="trl">{{cite web|title=Mark Twain in Toronto|url=http://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/trl/2015/09/mark-twain-in-toronto.html|website=Toronto Reference Library Blog|access-date=January 2, 2017|archive-date=January 2, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170102172134/http://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/trl/2015/09/mark-twain-in-toronto.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

The reason for the Toronto visits was to secure Canadian and British copyrights for Twain's upcoming book ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'',<ref name="mtj"/><ref name=trl/> to which he had alluded in his Montreal visit. The reason for the Ottawa visit had been to secure Canadian and British copyrights for ''Life on the Mississippi''.<ref name="mtj"/> Publishers in Toronto had printed unauthorized editions of Twain's books at the time, before an international copyright agreement was established in 1891.<ref name="mtj"/> These were sold in the United States as well as in Canada, depriving him of royalties. Twain estimated that [[Charles Belford|Belford Brothers']] edition of ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' alone had cost him $10,000 ({{Inflation|US|10000|1884|fmt=eq|r=-4}}).<ref name="mtj"/> He had unsuccessfully attempted to secure the rights for ''The Prince and the Pauper'' in 1881, in conjunction with his Montreal trip.<ref name="mtj"/> Eventually, Twain received legal advice to register a copyright in Canada (for both Canada and Britain) prior to publishing in the United States, which would restrain the Canadian publishers from printing a version when the American edition was published.<ref name="mtj"/><ref name=trl/> There was a requirement that a copyright be registered to a Canadian resident; Twain addressed this by his short visits to the country.<ref name="mtj"/><ref name=trl/>

===Later life and death===
{{Quote frame|align=right|The report of my death was an exaggeration. 1897|author=Twain<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/562400/reports-mark-twains-quote-about-mark-twains-death-are-greatly-exaggerated|title=Reports of Mark Twain's Quote About His Own Death Are Greatly Exaggerated|last=Petsko|first=Emily|date=November 2, 2018|access-date=20 July 2021|archive-date=July 15, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210715163816/https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/562400/reports-mark-twains-quote-about-mark-twains-death-are-greatly-exaggerated|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>"Chapters from My Autobiography", ''North American Review'', September 21, 1906, p. 160. Mark Twain</ref>}}
In his later years, Twain lived at 14 West 10th Street in [[Manhattan]].<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=April 14, 2017 |title=Find out if New York's greatest writers lived next door |url=https://nypost.com/2017/04/14/find-out-if-new-yorks-greatest-writers-lived-next-door/ |access-date=June 13, 2023 |language=en-US |archive-date=January 20, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180120070757/https://nypost.com/2017/04/14/find-out-if-new-yorks-greatest-writers-lived-next-door/ |url-status=live }}</ref> He passed through a period of deep depression which began in 1896 when his daughter Susy died of [[meningitis]]. Olivia's death in 1904 and Jean's on December 24, 1909, deepened Twain's gloom.<ref name="housebio" /> On May 20, 1909, his close friend Henry Rogers died suddenly.<ref name=obit>{{cite news |title=Apoplexy Carries Off the Financier Famous in Standard Oil, Railways, Gas, and Copper. |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B02E3D8153EE733A25753C2A9639C946897D6CF |quote=Henry Huttleston Rogers, one of the foremost of the country's captains of industry, and a notable figure for many years in financial and corporation development in this country, died suddenly at his home, 3 East Seventy-eighth Street, at 7:20 o'clock yesterday morning, following a stroke of [[apoplexy]], the second one he had suffered. |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=July 1, 2022 |date=May 20, 1909 |archive-date=May 4, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160504184136/http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B02E3D8153EE733A25753C2A9639C946897D6CF |url-status=live }}</ref>

In April 1906, Twain heard that his friend Ina Coolbrith had lost nearly all that she owned in the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake]], and he volunteered a few autographed portrait photographs to be sold for her benefit. To further aid Coolbrith, [[George Wharton James]] visited Twain in New York and arranged for a new portrait session. Twain was resistant initially, but he eventually admitted that four of the resulting images were the finest ones ever taken of him.<ref>TwainQuotes.com [http://www.twainquotes.com/Bradley/bradley.html ''The Story Behind the A. F. Bradley Photos''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080724224241/http://www.twainquotes.com/Bradley/bradley.html |date=July 24, 2008 }}, Retrieved on July 10, 2009.</ref> In September, Twain started publishing [[Chapters from My Autobiography|chapters from his autobiography]] in the ''[[North American Review]]''.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Mark Twain's own autobiography: the chapters from the North American review|last=Twain|first=Mark|date=2010|publisher=University of Wisconsin Press|editor-last=Kiskis|editor-first=Michael J.|isbn=9780299234737|edition= 2nd|location=Madison|oclc=608692466}}</ref> The same year, [[Charlotte Teller]], a writer living with her grandmother at 3 Fifth Avenue, began an acquaintanceship with him which "lasted several years and may have included romantic intentions" on his part.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kaser|first=James A.|title=The Chicago of Fiction: A Resource Guide|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WqlgaZqW67EC|year=2011|page=501|publisher=The Scarecrow Press|isbn=9780810877245}}</ref>

[[File:Autochrome of Mark Twain.jpg|left|thumb|Twain photographed in 1908 via the [[Autochrome Lumiere]] process]]
In 1906, Twain formed the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club, for girls whom he viewed as surrogate granddaughters. Its dozen or so members ranged in age from 10 to 16. Twain exchanged letters with his "Angel Fish" girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games. Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his "life's chief delight".<ref name="lemaster"/>{{Rp|28}} In 1907, he met [[Dorothy Quick]] (then age 11) on a transatlantic crossing, beginning "a friendship that was to last until the very day of his death".<ref>''[[The New York Times]]'', March 16, 1962, [http://www.twainquotes.com/19620316.html DOROTHY QUICK, POET AND AUTHOR: Mystery Writer Dies – Was Friend of Mark Twain] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140923142851/http://www.twainquotes.com/19620316.html |date=September 23, 2014}}</ref>

[[File:Mark Twain DLitt.jpg|thumb|upright|Twain in academic regalia for acceptance of the [[D.Litt.]] degree awarded to him by [[Oxford University]] in 1907]]
Twain was awarded an honorary [[Doctor of Letters]] (D.Litt.) by [[Yale University]] in 1901 and a [[Doctor of Law]] by the [[University of Missouri]] in 1902. [[Oxford University]] awarded him a Doctorate of Law in 1907.<ref>{{cite journal|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41582169|access-date=July 1, 2022|date=2003|title=In His Own Time: The Early Academic Reception of Mark Twain – The Mark Twain Annual No. 1|journal=The Mark Twain Annual|author=Terry Oggel|pages=45–60 [52, 58]|publisher=[[Penn State University Press]]|jstor=41582169|archive-date=July 1, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220701190457/https://www.jstor.org/stable/41582169|url-status=live}}</ref>

Twain was born two weeks after [[Halley's Comet]]'s closest approach in 1835; he said in 1909:<ref name="paine" />
{{blockquote|I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together". }}

Twain's prediction was eerily accurate; he died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in [[Stormfield]], one day after the comet was at its closest to the Sun and a month before the comet passed the Earth.<ref name="greatcomets">{{Cite web |title=Great Comets in History |first=Donald Keith |last=Yeomans |publisher=Jet Propulsion Laboratory |url=http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?great_comets |date=1998 |access-date=July 1, 2022 |archive-date=February 4, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204054558/http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?great_comets |url-status=dead }}</ref>

[[File:Graves of Olivia Langdon Clemens and Mark Twain.jpg|thumb|left|Twain and his wife are buried side by side in Elmira's [[Woodlawn Cemetery (Elmira, New York)|Woodlawn Cemetery]]]]
Upon hearing of Twain's death, President [[William Howard Taft]] said:<ref>{{cite web |url=http://classiclit.about.com/cs/profileswriters/p/aa_marktwain.htm |title=Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) |access-date=November 1, 2006 |author=Esther Lombardi, [[about.com]] |archive-date=September 5, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060905202410/http://classiclit.about.com/cs/profileswriters/p/aa_marktwain.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Mark Twain is Dead at 74. End Comes Peacefully at His New England Home After a Long Illness. |quote=[[Danbury, Connecticut]], April 21, 1910. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, "Mark Twain", died at 22 minutes after 6 to-night. Beside him on the bed lay a beloved book&nbsp;– it was Carlyle's ''French Revolution''&nbsp;– and near the book his glasses, pushed away with a weary sigh a few hours before. Too weak to speak clearly, he had written, "Give me my glasses", on a piece of paper. |work=The New York Times |date=April 22, 1910}}</ref>

{{blockquote|Mark Twain gave pleasure – real intellectual enjoyment – to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come ... His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of [[American literature]].}}

Twain's funeral was at the [[Brick Presbyterian Church (New York City)|Brick Presbyterian Church]] on Fifth Avenue, New York.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Mark Twain: Man in White: The Grand Adventure of His Final Years|first=Michael|last=Shelden|date=2010|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-0679448006|edition=1st|location=New York|oclc=320952684|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/marktwainmaninwh0000shel}}</ref> He is buried in his wife's family plot at [[Woodlawn Cemetery (Elmira, New York)|Woodlawn Cemetery]] in [[Elmira, New York]]. The Langdon family plot is marked by a {{Convert|12|ft|m|adj=mid}} monument (two fathoms, or "mark twain") placed there by Twain's surviving daughter Clara.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.go-new-york.com/Elmira |title=Elmira Travel Information |publisher=Go-new-york.com |access-date=December 30, 2010 |archive-date=May 22, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110522094645/http://www.go-new-york.com/Elmira/ |url-status=live }}</ref> There is also a smaller headstone. He expressed a preference for cremation (for example, in ''Life on the Mississippi''), but he acknowledged that his surviving family would have the last word.

Officials in Connecticut and New York estimated the value of Twain's estate at $471,000 (${{Inflation|US-GDP|471,000|1910|r=-6|fmt=c}} in {{Inflation/year|US-GDP}}).<ref>{{cite news |title=Mark Twain Estate About Half Million; Largely in Stocks and Estimated Worth of the Mark Twain Company. |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1911/07/15/archives/mark-twain-estate-about-half-million-largely-in-stocks-and.html |access-date=March 26, 2022 |date=July 15, 1911 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220102124939/https://www.nytimes.com/1911/07/15/archives/mark-twain-estate-about-half-million-largely-in-stocks-and.html |archive-date=January 2, 2022 |quote=Deputy State Controller Julius Harburger filed with the Surrogates' Court yesterday the tax appraisal of the estate of Samuel L. Clements, (Mark Twain.) Mr. Clemens died at his home in Connecticut on April 21, 1910. He left in this State and Connecticut an estate aggregating $471,136.}}</ref>

==Writing==
===Overview===
Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but he became a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies, and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, Twain combined rich humor, sturdy narrative, and social criticism in ''Huckleberry Finn''. He was a master of rendering [[colloquialism|colloquial speech]] and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language.

Many of Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. The ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools, not least for its frequent use of the word "[[nigger]]",<ref>{{Cite web| last = Friedman| first = Matt| title = New Jersey lawmakers want schools to stop teaching 'Huckleberry Finn'| work = Politico PRO| date = March 21, 2019| access-date = October 7, 2019| url = https://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2019/03/21/new-jersey-lawmakers-want-schools-to-stop-teaching-huckleberry-finn-924748| archive-date = July 28, 2019| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190728040601/https://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2019/03/21/new-jersey-lawmakers-want-schools-to-stop-teaching-huckleberry-finn-924748| url-status = live}}</ref> a slur commonly used for [[Black people]] in the nineteenth century.

A complete bibliography of Twain's works is nearly impossible to compile because of the vast number of pieces he wrote (often in obscure newspapers) and his use of several different pen names. Additionally, a large portion of Twain's speeches and lectures have been lost or were not recorded; thus, the compilation of his works is an ongoing process. Researchers have rediscovered published material as recently as 1995 and 2015.<ref name="c-a-kirk" /><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/04/mark-twain-cache-uncovered-berkeley|title=Mark Twain stories, 150 years old, uncovered by Berkeley scholars|author=Nicky Woolf|newspaper=the Guardian|date=May 4, 2015|access-date=December 12, 2016|archive-date=December 7, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161207053914/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/04/mark-twain-cache-uncovered-berkeley|url-status=live}}</ref>

===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''.

===''Tom Sawyer'' and ''Huckleberry Finn''===
Twain's next major publication was ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]'', which draws on his youth in Hannibal. [[Tom Sawyer]] was modeled on Twain as a child, with traces of schoolmates John Briggs and Will Bowen.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Graysmith |first=Robert |date=2012 |title=The Adventures of the Real Tom Sawyer |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-adventures-of-the-real-tom-sawyer-35894722/ |access-date=2024-06-05 |website=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en |archive-date=February 25, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200225005659/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-adventures-of-the-real-tom-sawyer-35894722/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Hoeltje |first=Hubert H. |date=1954 |title=When Mark Twain Spoke in Portland |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20612133 |journal=Oregon Historical Quarterly |volume=55 |issue=1 |pages=73–81 |jstor=20612133 |issn=0030-4727 |access-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605042934/https://www.jstor.org/stable/20612133 |url-status=live }}</ref> The book also introduces Huckleberry Finn in a supporting role, based on Twain's boyhood friend Tom Blankenship.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Lorch |first=Fred W. |date=1940 |title=A Note on Tom Blankenship (Huckleberry Finn) |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2921035 |journal=American Literature |volume=12 |issue=3 |pages=351–353 |jstor=2921035 |issn=0002-9831 |access-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605042933/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2921035 |url-status=live }}</ref>

''[[The Prince and the Pauper]]'' was not as well received, despite a [[Plot (narrative)|storyline]] that is common in film and literature today. The book tells the story of two boys born on the same day who are physically identical, acting as a social commentary as the prince and pauper switch places. Twain had started ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' (which he consistently had problems completing)<ref>{{cite book | last = Powers | first = Ron | author-link = Ron Powers | title = Mark Twain: A Life | publisher = Free Press | year = 2005 | location = New York | pages = [https://archive.org/details/marktwainlife00powe_0/page/471 471–473] | isbn = 978-0-7432-4899-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/marktwainlife00powe_0/page/471 }}</ref> and had completed his travel book ''[[A Tramp Abroad]]'', which describes his travels through central and southern Europe.

Twain's next major published work was the ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]'', which confirmed him as a noteworthy American writer. Some have called it the first Great American Novel, and the book has become required reading in many schools throughout the United States. ''Huckleberry Finn'' was an offshoot from ''Tom Sawyer'' and had a more serious tone than its predecessor. Four hundred manuscript pages were written in mid-1876, right after the publication of ''Tom Sawyer''. The last fifth of ''Huckleberry Finn'' is subject to much controversy. Some say that Twain experienced a "failure of nerve," as critic [[Leo Marx]] puts it. [[Ernest Hemingway]] once said of ''Huckleberry Finn'':

<blockquote>If you read it, you must stop where the Nigger Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating.</blockquote>

Hemingway also wrote in the same essay:

<blockquote>All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ''Huckleberry Finn''.<ref>From Chapter 1 of ''[[Green Hills of Africa]]''</ref></blockquote>

Near the completion of ''Huckleberry Finn'', Twain wrote ''Life on the Mississippi'', which is said to have heavily influenced the novel.<ref name="c-a-kirk"/> The travel work recounts Twain's memories and new experiences after a 22-year absence from the Mississippi River. In it, he also explains that "Mark Twain" was the call made when the boat was in safe water, indicating a depth of two (or [[wikt:twain|twain]]) [[fathom]]s ({{convert|12|ft|m|disp=or}}).

McDowell's cave—now known as [[Mark Twain Cave]] in Hannibal, Missouri, and frequently mentioned in Twain's book ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer''—has "Sam Clemens", Twain's real name, engraved on the wall by Twain himself.<ref>{{Cite web|author=Amanda Jackson|date=September 27, 2019|title=After decades of searching, Mark Twain's signature was found inside a famous cave|url=https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/26/us/mark-twain-clemens-signature-cave-found-trnd/index.html|access-date=March 5, 2021|website=CNN|language=en}}</ref>

===Later writing===
Twain produced President [[Ulysses S. Grant]]'s ''[[Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant|Memoirs]]'' through his fledgling publishing house, [[Charles L. Webster and Company]], which he co-owned with [[Charles L. Webster]], his nephew by marriage.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/grant/peopleevents/p_twain.html |title=American Experience&nbsp;– People & Events: Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910 |publisher=PBS |access-date=November 28, 2007 |archive-date=June 6, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090606185124/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/grant/peopleevents/p_twain.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

At this time, Twain also wrote "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" for ''[[The Century Magazine]]''.<ref>Reprinted in Benjamin Griffin, ed., ''Mark Twain's Civil War''.</ref> This piece detailed his two-week stint in a [[Confederate army|Confederate militia]] during the [[United States Civil War|Civil War]]. Twain next focused on ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'', written with the same historical fiction style as ''The Prince and the Pauper''. ''A Connecticut Yankee'' shows the absurdities of political and social norms by setting them in the court of [[King Arthur]]. The book was started in December 1885, then shelved a few months later until the summer of 1887, and eventually finished in the spring of 1889.<ref>{{Citation |last=Scharnhorst |first=Gary |title=Biography |date=2020 |work=Mark Twain in Context |pages=3–13 |editor-last=Bird |editor-first=John |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781108617208%23CN-bp-1/type/book_part |access-date=2024-06-05 |edition=1st|publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/9781108617208.003 |isbn=978-1-108-61720-8}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Davis |first=John H. |date=2007 |title=Cowboys and Indians in King Arthur's Court: Hank Morgan's Version of Manifest Destiny in Mark Twain's "Connecticut Yankee" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41561754 |journal=The Mark Twain Annual |issue=5 |pages=83–92 |jstor=41561754 |issn=1553-0981}}</ref>

Twain's next large-scale work was ''[[Pudd'nhead Wilson]]'', which he wrote rapidly, as he was desperately trying to stave off bankruptcy. From November 12 to December 14, 1893, Twain wrote 60,000 words for the novel.<ref name="c-a-kirk"/> Critics{{who|date=March 2017}} have pointed to this rushed completion as the cause of the novel's rough organization and constant disruption of the plot. This novel also contains the tale of two boys born on the same day who switch positions in life, like ''The Prince and the Pauper''. It was first published serially in ''Century Magazine'', and when it was finally published in book form, ''Pudd'nhead Wilson'' appeared as the main title; however, the "subtitles" make the entire title read ''The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy of The Extraordinary Twins''.<ref name="c-a-kirk"/>

Twain's next venture was a work of straight fiction that he called ''[[Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc]]'' and dedicated to his wife. Twain said a year before his death that this was the work that he was most proud of, despite the criticism that he received for it, writing: " I like ''Joan of Arc'' best of all my books; and it is the best; I know it perfectly well. And besides, it furnished me seven times the pleasure afforded me by any of the others; twelve years of preparation, and two years of writing. The others needed no preparation and got none."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Foster |first=David |date=2015 |title=On the Theme of Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/marktwaij.13.1.0043 |journal=The Mark Twain Annual |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=43–62 |doi=10.5325/marktwaij.13.1.0043 |jstor=10.5325/marktwaij.13.1.0043 |issn=1553-0981 |access-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605051627/https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/marktwaij.13.1.0043 |url-status=live }}</ref> The book had been a dream of Twain's since childhood, and he claimed that he had found a manuscript detailing the life of [[Joan of Arc]] when Twain was an adolescent.<ref name="c-a-kirk" /> It was written at the time of his bankruptcy and Twain was convinced that it would save his financial disposition. Twain specifically insisted it to be an anonymous publication so that readers would take it as a serious historical account.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt7zw24j |title=Mark Twain's Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers, 1893–1909 |date=1969 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-01467-1 |edition=1st |pages=132–230 |jstor=10.1525/j.ctt7zw24j |access-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605051631/https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt7zw24j |url-status=live }}</ref> With the help of his financial adviser Henry Huttleston Rogers, it was published anonymously in serials in the ''[[Harper's Magazine]]'' in 1895.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Knighton |first=Mary A. |date=2017 |title=Hearing Secret Voices in Twain's "Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc" |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44504996 |journal=Mark Twain Journal |volume=55 |issue=1/2 |pages=75–99 |jstor=44504996 |issn=0025-3499 |access-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605052951/https://www.jstor.org/stable/44504996 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Morris |first=Linda A. |date=2019 |title=What is "Personal" about Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc? |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/amerlitereal.51.2.0097 |journal=American Literary Realism |volume=51 |issue=2 |pages=97–110 |doi=10.5406/amerlitereal.51.2.0097 |jstor=10.5406/amerlitereal.51.2.0097 |issn=1540-3084 |access-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605052949/https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/amerlitereal.51.2.0097 |url-status=live }}</ref>

To pay the bills and keep his business projects afloat, Twain had begun to write articles and commentary furiously, with diminishing returns, but it was not enough. He filed for bankruptcy in 1894. During this time of dire financial straits, Twain published several literary reviews in newspapers to help make ends meet. He famously derided [[James Fenimore Cooper]] in his article detailing Cooper's "[[Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses|Literary Offenses]]". Twain became an extremely outspoken critic of other authors and other critics; he suggested that, before praising Cooper's work, [[Thomas Lounsbury]], [[Brander Matthews]], and [[Wilkie Collins]] "ought to have read some of it".<ref name=offenses>Twain, Mark. [http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/projects/rissetto/offense.html Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090819074655/http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/projects/rissetto/offense.html |date=August 19, 2009 }}. From Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches and Essays, from 1891 to 1910. Edited by Louis J. Budd. New York: Library of America, 1992.</ref>

[[George Eliot]], [[Jane Austen]], and [[Robert Louis Stevenson]] also fell under Twain's attack during this time period, beginning around 1890 and continuing until his death.<ref name=Feinstein>{{cite journal|last=Feinstein|first=George W|title=Twain as Forerunner of Tooth-and-Claw Criticism|journal=Modern Language Notes|date=January 1948|volume=63|issue=1|pages=49–50|jstor=2908644|doi=10.2307/2908644}}</ref> Twain outlines what he considers to be "quality writing" in several letters and essays, in addition to providing a source for the "tooth and claw" style of literary criticism. Twain places emphasis on concision, utility of word choice, and realism; he complains, for example, that Cooper's ''[[Deerslayer]]'' purports to be realistic but has several shortcomings. Ironically, several of Twain's own works were later criticized for lack of continuity (''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'') and organization (''Pudd'nhead Wilson'').<ref>{{Cite journal |last=von Frank |first=Albert J. |date=1979 |title=Huck Finn and the Flight from Maturity |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/440345 |journal=Studies in American Fiction |language=en |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=1–15 |doi=10.1353/saf.1979.0002 |issn=2158-5806 |access-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-date=June 3, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180603082215/http://muse.jhu.edu/article/440345 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Reid |first=Rebecca |date=2010-09-08 |title=Mark Twain's Mississippi Novels Book Review |url=https://reviews.rebeccareid.com/mark-twains-mississippi-novels/ |access-date=2024-06-05 |website=Rebecca Reads |language=en-US |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605052951/https://reviews.rebeccareid.com/mark-twains-mississippi-novels/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Twain's wife died in 1904 while the couple were staying at the [[Villa di Quarto]] in [[Florence]]. After some time had passed, he published some works that his wife, his ''de facto'' editor and censor throughout her married life, had looked down upon. ''[[The Mysterious Stranger]]'' is perhaps the best known, depicting various visits of [[Satan]] to earth. This particular work was not published in Twain's lifetime. His manuscripts included three versions, written between 1897 and 1905: the so-called Hannibal, Eseldorf, and Print Shop versions. The resulting confusion led to extensive publication of a jumbled version, and only recently{{when|date=October 2024}} have the original versions become available as Twain wrote them.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Twain |first=Mark |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.13083385 |title=Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts |date=2024 |volume=6 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-41281-1 |editor-last=Gibson |editor-first=William M. |doi=10.2307/jj.13083385 |access-date=June 7, 2024 |archive-date=June 5, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240605052951/https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.13083385 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Collins |first=Michael J. |date=2022-10-03 |title=No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger : Mark Twain's critique of progressive era meritocracy |journal=Textual Practice |language=en |volume=36 |issue=10 |pages=1665–1688 |doi=10.1080/0950236X.2021.1972037 |issn=0950-236X |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Martin |first=Michael S. |date=2011 |title=Centenary Reflections on Mark Twain's No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (review) |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/464492 |journal=Studies in the Novel |language=en |volume=43 |issue=4 |pages=510–512 |doi=10.1353/sdn.2011.0054 |issn=1934-1512}}</ref>

Twain's last work was [[Mark Twain's Autobiography|his autobiography]], which he dictated and thought would be most entertaining if he went off on whims and tangents in non-chronological order. Some archivists and compilers have rearranged the biography into a more conventional form, thereby eliminating some of Twain's humor and the flow of the book. The first volume of the autobiography, over 736&nbsp;pages, was published by the University of California in November 2010, 100&nbsp;years after his death, as Twain wished.<ref>[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/after-keeping-us-waiting-for-a-century-mark-twain-will-finally-reveal-all-1980695.html "After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all" The Independent 23 May 2010] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170722155902/http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/after-keeping-us-waiting-for-a-century-mark-twain-will-finally-reveal-all-1980695.html |date=July 22, 2017 }} Retrieved May 29, 2010</ref><ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/books/10twain.html?ref=arts "Dead for a Century, He's Ready to Say What He Really Meant" The New York Times 9 July 2010] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170119152325/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/books/10twain.html?ref=arts |date=January 19, 2017 }}. Retrieved July 9, 2010.</ref> It soon became an unexpected best-seller,<ref>{{cite news | newspaper = NY Times | date = November 26, 2010 | title = Mark Twain's Big Book | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/opinion/27sat4.html | quote = an enormous hit, apparently much to the surprise of its publisher | access-date = November 27, 2010 | archive-date = May 13, 2011 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110513025816/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/27/opinion/27sat4.html | url-status = live }}</ref> making Twain one of a very few authors publishing new best-selling volumes in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

===Censorship===
Twain's works have been subjected to censorship efforts. According to Stuart (2013), "Leading these banning campaigns, generally, were religious organizations or individuals in positions of influence – not so much working librarians, who had been instilled with that American "library spirit" which honored intellectual freedom (within bounds of course)". In 1905, the [[Brooklyn Public Library]] banned both ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' and ''The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'' from the children's department because of their language.<ref>Murray, Stuart A. P. ''The Library: An Illustrated History'', New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 189.</ref>

===Publishers===
For two decades, Twain lived in a house in [[Hartford, Connecticut]] (1871–1891), and the American Publishing Company in that city published the first edition of several of his books.<ref name=publ>{{cite web |last= Golden |first= Audrey |title= Who Were Mark Twain's Publishers? |website= BooksTellYouWhy.com |date= November 30, 2019 |url= https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/who-were-mark-twains-publishers |access-date= August 29, 2022 |archive-date= August 29, 2022 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20220829160832/https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/who-were-mark-twains-publishers |url-status= live }}</ref> The same can be said about a number of [[New York City|New York]]-based companies, such as [[Harper & Brothers]] and his nephew's Charles L. Webster and Company.<ref name=publ/> Other memorable editions were created by The Ash Ranch Press of [[San Diego]] and [[Barry Moser]]'s Pennyroyal Press.<ref name=publ/>

==Views==
Twain's views became more radical as he grew older. In a letter to friend and fellow writer [[William Dean Howells]] in 1887, Twain acknowledged that his views had changed and developed over his lifetime, referring to one of his favorite works:
{{blockquote|When I finished [[Thomas Carlyle|Carlyle]]'s ''[[The French Revolution (Carlyle)|French Revolution]]'' in 1871, I was a [[Girondin]]; every time I have read it since, I have read it differently&nbsp;– being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and environment&nbsp;... and now I lay the book down once more, and recognize that I am a [[Sansculotte]]! And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a [[Jean-Paul Marat|Marat]].<ref>Frederick Anderson, ed., A Pen Warmed Up in Hell: Mark Twain in Protest (New York: Harper, 1972), p. 8, cited in Helen Scott's "The Mark Twain they didn't teach us about in school" (2000) in ''International Socialist Review'' 10, Winter 2000, pp. 61–65</ref><ref name=MTLetters>{{cite web|title=Mark Twain's Letters 1886–1900|url=http://mark-twain.classic-literature.co.uk/mark-twains-letters-1886-1900/ebook-page-12.asp|website=Mark Twain Classic Literature Library|access-date=8 January 2015|archive-date=June 8, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140608072928/http://mark-twain.classic-literature.co.uk/mark-twains-letters-1886-1900/ebook-page-12.asp|url-status=live}}</ref>}}

===Politics===
[[File:New York at the Jamestown Exposition, Norfolk, Virginia, April 26 to December 1, 1907 (1909) (14596132187).jpg|thumb|right|250px|Twain (second from right) with [[NSDAR]] President General [[Emily Nelson Ritchie McLean]] at the [[Jamestown Exposition]] in [[Norfolk, Virginia]], in 1907]]
Twain was a staunch supporter of technological progress and [[commerce]]. He was against [[welfare spending|welfare]] measures, because Twain believed that society in the "[[Gilded Age|business age]]" is governed by "exact and constant" laws that should not be "interfered with for the accommodation of any individual or political or religious faction".<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Budd |first=Louis J. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G5gNAQAAIAAJ |title=Mark Twain: Social Philosopher |date=1962 |publisher=University of Missouri Press |isbn=978-0-8262-1368-6 |pages=160 |language=en}}</ref> He opined that "there is no good government at all & none possible".<ref name=":0" /> In the opinion of [[Washington University in St. Louis|Washington University]] professor Guy A. Cardwell:

{{blockquote|By present standards Mark Twain was more conservative than liberal. He believed strongly in laissez faire, thought personal political rights secondary to property rights, admired self-made plutocrats, and advocated a leadership to be composed of men of wealth and brains. Among his attitudes now more readily recognized as liberal were a faith in progress through technology and a hostility towards monarchy, inherited aristocracy, the Roman Catholic church, and, in his later years, imperialism.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Cardwell |first=Guy A. |date=1963-09-01 |title=Review: Mark Twain: Social Philosopher, by Louis J. Budd |url=https://online.ucpress.edu/ncl/article/18/2/197/64416/Review-Mark-Twain-Social-Philosopher-by-Louis-J |journal=Nineteenth-Century Fiction |language=en |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=197–200 |doi=10.2307/2932778 |jstor=2932778 |issn=0029-0564 |access-date=July 7, 2022 |archive-date=July 7, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220707173352/https://online.ucpress.edu/ncl/article/18/2/197/64416/Review-Mark-Twain-Social-Philosopher-by-Louis-J |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

====Labor====
Twain wrote glowingly about [[Trade union|unions]] in the river boating industry in ''Life on the Mississippi'', which was read in union halls decades later.<ref>Philip S. Foner, ''Mark Twain: Social Critic'' (New York: International Publishers, 1958), p. 98</ref> He supported the [[labor movement]], especially one of the most important unions, the [[Knights of Labor]].<ref name="helen-scott"/> In a speech to them, Twain said:
{{blockquote|Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.<ref>Philip S. Foner, ''Mark Twain: Social Critic'' (New York: International Publishers, 1958), p. 169, cited in Helen Scott's "The Mark Twain they didn't teach us about in school" (2000) in ''International Socialist Review'' 10, Winter 2000, pp. 61–65</ref>}}

Twain further wrote "Why is it right that there is not a fairer division of the spoil all around? Because laws and constitutions have ordered otherwise. Then it follows that laws and constitutions should change around and say there shall be a more nearly equal division."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Twain |first1=Mark |title=Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays 1852–1890 |date=1992 |publisher=Library of America |page=884}}</ref>

====Imperialism====
Before 1899, Twain was largely in favor of [[American imperialism|imperialism]]. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, he spoke out strongly in favor of American interests in the [[Kingdom of Hawaii|Hawaiian Islands]].<ref>David Zmijewski, "The Man in Both Corners: Mark Twain the Shadowboxing Imperialist", ''Hawaiian Journal of History'', 2006, Vol. 40, pp. 55–73</ref> Twain said the war with Spain in 1898 was "the worthiest" war ever fought.<ref>Paine, ed. ''Letters'' 2:663; Ron Powers, ''Mark Twain: a life'' (2005) p. 593</ref> However, he reversed course in 1899. In the ''[[New York Herald]]'', October 16, 1900, Twain describes his transformation and political awakening, in the context of the [[Philippine–American War]], to [[anti-imperialism]]:

{{blockquote|I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific&nbsp;... Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself?&nbsp;... I said to myself, Here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the [[Constitution of the United States|American Constitution]] afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the [[Treaty of Paris (1898)|treaty of Paris]] (which ended the [[Spanish–American War]]), and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.

It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.<ref>From Andrew Jay Hoffman, ''Inventing Mark Twain: The Lives of Samuel Langhorne Clemens'' (New York: William Morrow, 1997), cited in Helen Scott's "The Mark Twain they didn't teach us about in school" (2000) in ''International Socialist Review'' 10, Winter 2000, pp. 61–65</ref><ref name=NYHerald19001016>{{cite news |title=Mark Twain Home, An Anti-Imperialist |url=http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%2014/New%20York%20NY%20Herald/New%20York%20NY%20Herald%201900/New%20York%20NY%20Herald%201900%20-%208960.pdf |page=4 |date=October 16, 1900 |newspaper=[[New York Herald]] |access-date=October 25, 2014 |archive-date=October 16, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016211319/http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper%2014/New%20York%20NY%20Herald/New%20York%20NY%20Herald%201900/New%20York%20NY%20Herald%201900%20-%208960.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

During the [[Boxer Rebellion]], Twain said that "the Boxer is a patriot. He loves his country better than he does the countries of other people. I wish him success."<ref>{{cite book|last=Twain|first=Mark |title=Mark Twain Speeches |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dhWMWs_7J3UC&pg=PA116|date=2007|isbn=978-1-4346-7879-9|page=116|publisher=BiblioBazaar }}</ref>

[[File:Mark Twain's proposed flag for the American-controlled Philippines (1901).svg|thumb|In 1901, Twain wrote a satirical essay titled ''[[To the Person Sitting in Darkness]]'', in which he expressed his strong anti-imperialist views against ongoing conflicts such as the Boxer Rebellion, the Second Boer War and the Philippine–American War. At one point in the essay, Twain made a sardonic suggestion for a flag of the Philippines under American control; "''And as for a flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one—our States do it: we can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.''"<ref>{{cite web |url=https://guides.loc.gov/world-of-1898/mark-twain#:~:text=And%20as%20for%20a%20flag,the%20skull%20and%20cross%2Dbones. |title=World of 1898: International Perspectives on the Spanish American War / Mark Twain |author= |date= |work=Library of Congress |access-date=16 October 2024}}</ref>]]

From 1901, soon after his return from Europe, until his death in 1910, Twain was vice-president of the [[American Anti-Imperialist League]],<ref name=zwick>''Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine–American War''. (1992, Jim Zwick, ed.) {{ISBN|0-8156-0268-5}}</ref> which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States and had "tens of thousands of members".<ref name="helen-scott" /> He wrote many [[Pamphlet|political pamphlets]] for the organization. The ''Incident in the Philippines'', posthumously published in 1924, was in response to the [[First Battle of Bud Dajo|Moro Crater Massacre]], in which 600 [[Moro people|Moros]] were killed. Twain wrote: "In what way was it a battle? It has no resemblance to a battle...We cleaned up our four days' work and made it complete by butchering these helpless people."<ref>{{cite book |title= Comments on the Moro Massacre |isbn = 9788026878148|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o101DwAAQBAJ&q=twain+complete+works+comments+moro&pg=PT5120|last1 = Twain|first1 = Mark|date = 2017| publisher=E-artnow }}</ref><ref>[http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/clemensmoromassacre.html "Comments on the Moro Massacre". by Samuel Clemens (March 12, 1906)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180206080228/http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/clemensmoromassacre.html |date=February 6, 2018 }}. History is a Weapon.</ref> Many of his neglected and previously uncollected writings on anti-imperialism appeared for the first time in book form in 1992.<ref name=zwick />

Twain was critical of imperialism in other countries as well. In ''Following the Equator'', Twain expresses "hatred and condemnation of imperialism of all stripes".<ref name="helen-scott" /> He was highly critical of European imperialists such as [[Cecil Rhodes]] and [[Leopold II of Belgium|King Leopold II of Belgium]], both of whom attempted to establish colonies on the African continent during the [[Scramble for Africa]].<ref name="helen-scott" /> ''[[King Leopold's Soliloquy]]'' is a [[political satire]] about the monarch's private colony, the [[Congo Free State]]. Reports of outrageous exploitation and [[Atrocities in the Congo Free State|grotesque abuses]] led to widespread international outcry in the early 1900s, arguably the first large-scale [[human rights]] movement. In the soliloquy, the King argues that bringing [[Christianity]] to [[Congo Free State|the colony]] outweighs "a little starvation". The abuses against Congolese forced laborers continued until the movement forced the [[Government of Belgium|Belgian government]] to take direct control of the colony.<ref>{{cite book |title=King Leopold's ghost : a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa |author=Adam Hochschild |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-395-75924-0 |oclc=39042794 |url=https://archive.org/details/kingleopoldsgho000hoch }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |newspaper=The New York Times |title=Into Africa |author=Jeremy Harding |date=September 20, 1998 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/20/books/into-africa.html |access-date=February 11, 2017 |archive-date=February 12, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170212165426/http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/20/books/into-africa.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

During the [[Philippine–American War]], Twain wrote a short [[Pacifism|pacifist]] story titled ''[[The War Prayer]]'', which makes the point that humanism and Christianity's preaching of love are incompatible with the conduct of war. It was submitted to ''[[Harper's Bazaar]]'' for publication, but on March 22, 1905, the magazine rejected the story as "not quite suited to a [[Women's magazine|woman's magazine]]". Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend [[Daniel Carter Beard]], to whom he had read the story, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth." Because he had an exclusive contract with [[Harper & Brothers]], Twain could not publish ''The War Prayer'' elsewhere; it remained unpublished until 1916.<ref>{{cite web |title=Harper's |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Harper%27s |website=Wikisource |access-date=December 26, 2021 |archive-date=February 13, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230213165611/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Harper%27s |url-status=live }}</ref> It was republished in the 1960s as campaigning material by [[Opposition to the Vietnam War|anti-war activists]].<ref name="helen-scott" />

Twain acknowledged that he had originally sympathized with the more moderate [[Girondins]] of the [[French Revolution]] and then shifted his sympathies to the more radical [[Sansculottes]], indeed identifying himself as "a [[Jean-Paul Marat|Marat]]" and writing that the [[Reign of Terror]] paled in comparison to the older terrors that preceded it.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/08/that-older-and-real-terror/244113/|title=That Older and Real Terror|last=Coates|first=Ta-Nehisi|date=August 25, 2011|website=[[The Atlantic]]|access-date=July 29, 2018|archive-date=July 29, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180729230900/https://www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/08/that-older-and-real-terror/244113/|url-status=live}}</ref> Twain supported the [[Russian Revolution (1905)|revolutionaries in Russia]] against the reformists, arguing that the [[Tsar]] must be got rid of by violent means, because peaceful ones would not work.<ref>Maxwell Geismar, ed., ''Mark Twain and the Three Rs: Race, Religion, Revolution and Related Matters'' (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), p. 169, cited in Helen Scott's "The Mark Twain they didn't teach us about in school" (2000) in ''International Socialist Review'' 10, Winter 2000, pp. 61–65</ref> He summed up his views of revolutions in the following statement:
{{blockquote|I am said to be a revolutionist in my sympathies, by birth, by breeding and by principle. I am always on the side of the revolutionists, because there never was a revolution unless there were some oppressive and intolerable conditions against which to revolute.<ref>Maxwell Geismar, ed., Mark Twain and the Three Rs: Race, Religion, Revolution and Related Matters (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), p. 159</ref> }}

====Civil rights====
Twain was an adamant supporter of the [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolition of slavery]] and the [[emancipation]] of slaves, even going so far as to say, "[[Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln]]'s [[Emancipation Proclamation|Proclamation]]&nbsp;... not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also".<ref>Philip S. Foner, ''Mark Twain: Social Critic'' (New York: International Publishers, 1958), p. 200</ref> He argued that non-whites did not receive justice in the United States, once saying, "I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature&nbsp;... but I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done to him".<ref>Maxwell Geismar, ed., ''Mark Twain and the Three Rs: Race, Religion, Revolution and Related Matters'' (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), p. 98</ref> Twain paid for at least one black person to attend [[Yale Law School]] and for another black person to attend a southern university to become a minister.<ref>Paine, A. B., Mark Twain: A Biography, Harper, 1912 p. 701</ref>

Twain was also a supporter of [[History of women's suffrage in the United States|women's suffrage]], as evidenced by his "[[Votes for Women (speech)|Votes for Women]]" speech, given in 1901.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Mark Twain's Speeches|url=https://archive.org/details/marktwainsspeec00twaigoog|last=Twain|first=Mark|publisher=Harper & Bros.|year=1910|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/marktwainsspeec00twaigoog/page/n117 101]–103}}</ref>

[[Helen Keller]] benefited from Twain's support as she pursued her college education and publishing despite her disabilities and financial limitations. The two were friends for roughly 16 years.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.perkins.org/stories/seven-fascinating-facts-you-probably-didnt-know-about-helen-keller|title=Seven fascinating facts you probably didn't know about Helen Keller|website=Perkins School for the Blind|access-date=March 20, 2019|archive-date=June 11, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190611010555/https://www.perkins.org/stories/seven-fascinating-facts-you-probably-didnt-know-about-helen-keller|url-status=live}}</ref>

Through Twain's efforts, the Connecticut legislature voted a pension for [[Prudence Crandall]], since 1995 Connecticut's official heroine, for her efforts towards the education of young African-American women in Connecticut. Twain also offered to purchase for her use her former house in Canterbury, home of the [[Canterbury Female Boarding School]], but she declined.<ref>{{cite news
|title=Prudence Crandall Champion of Negro Education |first1=Miriam R. |last1=Small |first2=Edwin W. |last2=Small |magazine=[[New England Quarterly]] |volume=17 |number=4 |date=December 1944 |pages=506–529}}</ref>{{rp|528}}

At 62, Twain wrote in his travelogue ''Following the Equator'' (1897) that in colonized lands all over the world, "savages" have always been wronged by "[[White people|whites]]" in the most merciless ways, such as "robbery, humiliation, and slow, slow murder, through poverty and the white man's whiskey"; his conclusion is that "there are many humorous things in this world; among them the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages".<ref>Twain, Mark. 2008. ''Following the Equator''. pp. 94–98</ref> Describing his travels, Twain wrote, "So far as I am able to judge nothing has been left undone, either by man or Nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.amritt.com/india-business-guide/mark-twain-india/ |publisher=Amritt |title=Mark Twain in India |date=2009 |access-date=May 8, 2014 |archive-date=May 9, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140509002821/http://www.amritt.com/india-business-guide/mark-twain-india/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

====Native Americans====
Twain's earlier writings on [[Native Americans in the United States|American Indians]] reflected his view of essentialized [[Race (human categorization)|racial]] difference. Twain wrote in "The Noble Red Man" in 1870: {{blockquote|His heart is a cesspool of falsehood, of treachery, and of low and devilish instincts. With him, gratitude is an unknown emotion; and when one does him a kindness, it is safest to keep the face toward him, lest the reward be an arrow in the back. To accept of a favor from him is to assume a debt which you can never repay to his satisfaction, though you bankrupt yourself trying. The scum of the earth!<ref name=indian_hater>{{cite web | url = http://www.bluecorncomics.com/twain.htm | title = Mark Twain, Indian Hater | access-date = 2008-07-09 | date = May 28, 2001 | publisher = Blue Corn Comics | archive-date = September 15, 2008 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080915133043/http://www.bluecorncomics.com/twain.htm | url-status = live }}</ref>}} In the same tract, Twain advocates genocide, describing the "Noble Aborigine" as :  "nothing but a poor filthy, naked scurvy vagabond, whom to exterminate were a charity to the Creator's worthier insects and reptiles which he oppresses"<ref>Mark Twain, "[https://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDFs/twain-noble-red-man-facsimile.pdf The Noble Red Man] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240506193428/https://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDFs/twain-noble-red-man-facsimile.pdf |date=May 6, 2024 }}", 1870</ref>  This piece sought to undermine the sympathy felt on the "Atlantic seabord" for Native Americans.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Clark |first=Beverly Lyon |title=Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous People by Kerry Driscoll (review) |journal=Great Plains Quarterly |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/747066 |volume=40 |issue=1 |date=2020 |doi=10.1353/gpq.2020.0004 |access-date=April 21, 2024 |archive-date=May 17, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220517203954/https://muse.jhu.edu/article/747066 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Harris |first=Helen L. |title=Mark Twain's Response to the Native American |volume=46 |issue=4 |date=1975 |pages=495–505 |journal=American Literature |publisher=Duke University Press |doi=10.2307/2924574 |jstor=2924574 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2924574.pdf |access-date=April 21, 2024 |archive-date=March 25, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200325182410/https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2924574.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>  In 1895, Twain was still ridiculing the author of ''[[Last of the Mohicans]],'' saying in "[[Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses]]" that Cooper "[...] was almost always in error about his Indians. There was seldom a sane one among them."<ref>{{cite web |author=Mark Twain |website=Mark Twain in his Times |url=https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html |title=Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses |date=1895 |access-date=April 21, 2024 |archive-date=April 21, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240421173045/https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

====Political parties====
Twain was a [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] for most of his life. However, in [[1884 United States presidential election|1884]], Twain publicly broke with his party and joined the [[Mugwumps]] to support the Democratic nominee, [[Grover Cleveland]], over the Republican nominee, [[James G. Blaine]], whom he considered a corrupt politician.<ref name=":1">{{Citation |last=Leonard |first=James S. |title=Politics |date=2020 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/mark-twain-in-context/politics/BF35295E23B6F72A15FFCE2ED74B50CB |work=Mark Twain in Context |pages=151–160 |editor-last=Bird |editor-first=John |series=Literature in Context |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-108-47260-9 |access-date=July 7, 2022}}</ref> Twain spoke at rallies in favor of Cleveland. In the early 20th century, Twain began decrying both Democrats and Republicans as "insane" and proposed, in his 1907 book ''[[Christian Science (book)|Christian Science]]'', that while each party recognized the other's insanity, only the Mugwumps (that is, those who eschewed party loyalties in favor of voting for "the best man") could perceive the overall madness linking the two.<ref name=":1" />

===Religion===
{{see also|Twain–Ament indemnities controversy}}
Twain was a [[Presbyterianism|Presbyterian]]<!-- buried from Presbyterian church, attended Presbyterian services with Livy, raised as a Presbyterian per Autobiography, donated large sums to build Presbyterian churches{{cn|date=January 2015}}-->.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The wit and wisdom of Mark Twain|last=Twain|first=Mark|others=Blaisdell, Robert|isbn=978-0486489230|location=Mineola, NY|publisher=Dover Publications|page=20|oclc=761852687|date = January 2013}}</ref> He was critical of [[organized religion]] and certain elements of Christianity through his later life. For example, Twain wrote, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so", and "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be&nbsp;– a Christian".<ref name="Huberman">{{cite book| title =The Quotable Atheist| last =Huberman| first =Jack| year =2007| publisher =Nation Books| isbn =978-1-56025-969-5| pages =[https://archive.org/details/quotableatheista0000unse/page/303 303–304]|url=https://archive.org/details/quotableatheista0000unse/page/303}}</ref> With [[anti-Catholic]] sentiment rampant in 19th century America, Twain noted that he was "educated to enmity toward everything that is Catholic".<ref>{{cite news|title=America's dark and not-very-distant history of hating Catholics|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/12/america-history-of-hating-catholics|newspaper=The Guardian|date=September 18, 2016|access-date=December 12, 2016|archive-date=March 14, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210314100423/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/12/america-history-of-hating-catholics|url-status=live}}</ref> As an adult, Twain engaged in religious discussions and attended services, his theology developing as Twain wrestled with the deaths of loved ones and with his own mortality.<ref name="199.236.117.33">Dempsey, Terrell, [http://www.twainweb.net/reviews/phipps.html Book Review: Mark Twain's Religion. William E. Phipps] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140915090227/http://www.twainweb.net/reviews/phipps.html |date=September 15, 2014 }} 2004 Mark Twain Forum</ref>

Twain generally avoided publishing his most controversial<ref>{{cite book|title=Letters from Earth|publisher=Ostara publications|page=back cover|year=2013}}</ref> opinions on religion in his lifetime, and they are known from essays and stories that were published later. In the essay ''Three Statements of the Eighties'' in the 1880s, Twain stated that he believed in an almighty God, but not in any messages, [[revelation]]s, [[holy scripture]]s such as the Bible, [[Divine Providence|Providence]], or retribution in the [[afterlife]]. Twain did state that "the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of God are manifested in His works", but also that "[[deism|the universe is governed by strict and immutable laws]]", which determine "small matters", such as who dies in a pestilence.<ref>Twain, Mark, ed. by Paul Baender. 1973. What is man?: and other philosophical writings. p. 56</ref> At other times, he plainly professed a belief in Providence.<ref>Phipps, William E., [https://books.google.com/books?id=x2HBYrytvRoC Mark Twain's Religion] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230418110717/https://books.google.com/books?id=x2HBYrytvRoC |date=April 18, 2023 }}, pp. 263–266, 2003 Mercer Univ. Press</ref> In some later writings in the 1890s, Twain was less optimistic about the [[theodicy|goodness of God]], observing that "if our Maker ''is'' all-powerful for good or evil, He is not in His right mind". At other times, he conjectured sardonically that perhaps God had created the world with all its tortures for some purpose of His own, but was otherwise indifferent to humanity, which was too petty and insignificant to deserve His attention anyway.<ref>Twain, Mark, ed. by Paul Baender. 1973. What is man?: and other philosophical writings. pp. 10, 486</ref>

In 1901, Twain criticized the actions of the [[missionary]] Dr. [[William Scott Ament]] (1851–1909) because Ament and other missionaries had collected indemnities from Chinese subjects in the aftermath of the [[Boxer uprising]] of 1900. Twain's response to hearing of Ament's methods was published in the ''North American Review'' in February 1901: ''[[To the Person Sitting in Darkness]]'', and deals with examples of [[imperialism]] in China, South Africa, and with the U.S. occupation of the Philippines.<ref>Mark Twain, "To the Person Sitting in Darkness", ''The North American Review'' 182:531 (February 1901): 161–176; {{JSTOR|25105120}}</ref> A subsequent article, "To My Missionary Critics" published in ''The North American Review'' in April 1901, unapologetically continues his attack, but with the focus shifted from Ament to his missionary superiors, the [[American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions]].<ref>Mark Twain, "To My Missionary Critics", ''The North American Review'' 172 (April 1901):520–534; {{JSTOR|25105150}}</ref>

After his death, Twain's family suppressed some of his work that was especially irreverent toward conventional religion, including ''[[Letters from the Earth]]'', which was not published until his daughter [[Clara Clemens|Clara]] reversed her position in 1962 in response to [[Soviet propaganda]] about the withholding.<ref name="NYTimes1962">{{Cite news | issn = 0362-4331 | title = Anti-Religious Work by Twain, Long Withheld, to Be Published | periodical = The New York Times | page = 23 | date = August 24, 1962 | publication-date = August 24, 1962 | last1 = Gelb | first1 = Arthur | author-link = Arthur Gelb | url = http://www.twainquotes.com/19620824.html | access-date = April 22, 2008 | archive-date = July 25, 2008 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080725071803/http://www.twainquotes.com/19620824.html | url-status = live }}</ref> The anti-religious ''The Mysterious Stranger'' was published in 1916. ''Little Bessie'', a story ridiculing Christianity, was first published in the 1972 collection ''Mark Twain's Fables of Man''.<ref>{{cite book |title=Mark Twain's Fables of Man |last=Twain |first=Mark |editor1=John S. Tuckey |editor2=Kenneth M. Sanderson |editor3=Bernard L. Stein |editor4=Frederick Anderson |year=1972 |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |location=California |isbn=978-0-520-02039-9 |chapter=Little Bessie |chapter-url=http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/twainbes.htm |url=https://archive.org/details/fablesofman0000twai }}{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

Twain raised money to build a [[Presbyterian Church]] in Nevada in 1864.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/us/02twain.html?fta=y |title=Church Aided by Twain Is in a Demolition Dispute |agency=[[Associated Press]] |work=The New York Times |date=April 2, 2006 |access-date=October 5, 2008 |archive-date=April 15, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090415235207/http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/us/02twain.html?fta=y |url-status=live }}</ref>

Twain created a reverent portrayal of [[Joan of Arc]], a subject over which he had obsessed for forty years, studied for a dozen years and spent two years writing about.<ref name="The Adventures of Mark Twain">Paine, Albert Bigelow, [https://books.google.com/books?id=93o7_0oICWMC The Adventures of Mark Twain] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230406221221/https://books.google.com/books?id=93o7_0oICWMC |date=April 6, 2023 }}, p. 281, Kessinger 2004</ref> In 1900 and again in 1908, Twain stated, "I like ''Joan of Arc'' best of all my books, it is the best".<ref name="The Adventures of Mark Twain"/><ref>Goy-Blanquet, Dominique, [https://books.google.com/books?id=4QkSZ7cHy38C Joan of Arc, a saint for all reasons: studies in myth and politics] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230406221223/https://books.google.com/books?id=4QkSZ7cHy38C |date=April 6, 2023 }}, p. 132, 2003 [[Ashgate Publishing]]</ref>

Those who knew Twain well late in life recount that he dwelt on the subject of the afterlife, his daughter Clara saying: "Sometimes he believed death ended everything, but most of the time he felt sure of a life beyond."<ref>Phipps, William E., [https://books.google.com/books?id=x2HBYrytvRoC Mark Twain's Religion] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230418110717/https://books.google.com/books?id=x2HBYrytvRoC |date=April 18, 2023 }}, p. 304, 2003 Mercer Univ. Press</ref>

Twain's frankest views on religion appeared in his final work ''[[Autobiography of Mark Twain]]'', the publication of which started in November 2010, 100 years after his death. In it, Twain said:<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec10/twain_07-07.html| title = Mark Twain's Autobiography Set for Unveiling, a Century After His Death| author = PBS NewsHour| website = [[PBS]]| date = July 7, 2010| access-date = July 7, 2010| author-link = PBS NewsHour| archive-date = January 21, 2014| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140121221718/http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec10/twain_07-07.html| url-status = dead}}</ref>{{blockquote|There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory as it is&nbsp;– in our country particularly and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree&nbsp;– it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime&nbsp;– the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor his Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.}}

Twain was a [[Freemason]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://mertsahinoglu.com/research/samuel-langhorne-clemens/|title=Brother Samuel Langhorne Clemens: A Missouri Freemason – Mert Sahinoglu|website=mertsahinoglu.com|access-date=October 30, 2009|archive-date=October 5, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131005012246/http://mertsahinoglu.com/research/samuel-langhorne-clemens/|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | title = MIC Mark Twain Award | author = Masonic Information Center | url = http://www.msana.com/twainaward/ | access-date = October 28, 2017 | archive-date = October 28, 2017 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20171028145355/http://www.msana.com/twainaward/ | url-status = live }}</ref> He belonged to Polar Star Lodge No. 79 A.F.&A.M., based in St. Louis. Twain was initiated an [[Entered Apprentice]] on May 22, 1861, passed to the degree of [[Fellow Craft]] on June 12, and raised to the degree of [[Master Mason]] on July 10.

Twain visited [[Salt Lake City]] for two days and met members of [[the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]]. They also gave him a [[Book of Mormon]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ldsliving.com/What-Mark-Twain-Really-Thought-About-Mormons/s/78635|title=What Mark Twain Really Thought About Mormons|author=Kathryn Jenkins Gordon|work=LDS Living|date=August 18, 2015|access-date=October 27, 2015|archive-date=January 3, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160103021105/http://www.ldsliving.com/What-Mark-Twain-Really-Thought-About-Mormons/s/78635|url-status=live}}</ref> He later wrote in ''[[Roughing It]]'' about that book:<ref>''[[Roughing It]]'' – Chapter 16</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/13/i-nephi|title=I, Nephi|author=Adam Gopnik|magazine=[[The New Yorker]]|date=August 13, 2012|access-date=October 27, 2015|archive-date=November 7, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151107092313/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/13/i-nephi|url-status=live}}</ref>{{blockquote|The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament.}}

==Pen names==
Twain used different pen names before deciding on "Mark Twain". He signed humorous and imaginative sketches as "Josh" until 1863. Additionally, Twain used the pen name "Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass" for a series of humorous letters.<ref>''Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass'', (Charles Honce, James Bennet, ed.), Pascal Covici, Chicago, 1928</ref>

Twain maintained that his primary pen name came from his years working on Mississippi riverboats, where two fathoms, a depth indicating water safe for the passage of boat, was a measure on the [[sounding line]]. Twain is an [[archaism|archaic]] term for "two", as in "The veil of the temple was rent in twain."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://bible.cc/matthew/27-51.htm |title=Matthew 27:51 at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split |publisher=Bible.cc |access-date=December 7, 2013 |archive-date=May 9, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130509020052/http://bible.cc/matthew/27-51.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> The riverboatman's cry was "mark twain" or, more fully, "by the mark twain", meaning "according to the mark [on the line], [the depth is] two [fathoms]"; that is, "The water is {{convert|12|ft|m}} deep and it is safe to pass."

Twain said that his famous pen name was not entirely his invention. In ''Life on the Mississippi'', Twain wrote:
<blockquote>[[Isaiah Sellers|Captain Isaiah Sellers]] was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them "MARK TWAIN", and give them to the ''[[Times-Picayune|New Orleans Picayune]]''. They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable;&nbsp;... At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a [[Pseudonym#Noms de guerre|nom de guerre]]; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands&nbsp;– a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.<ref>''Life on the Mississippi'', chapter 50</ref></blockquote>

Twain's story about his pen name has been questioned by some,<ref>{{cite book |last = Williams, III |first = George |title = Mark Twain and the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County: How Mark Twain's humorous frog story launched his legendary career |year = 1999 |publisher = Tree by the River Publishing |isbn = 0-935174-45-1 |chapter = Mark Twain Leaves Virginia City for San Francisco}} Cited in {{cite web |url=http://www.autographed-books.com/whoisgeorgewilliamsiii.html |title=Excerpt: ''The Singular Mark Twain'' |access-date=June 26, 2007 |archive-date=May 6, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070506192020/http://www.autographed-books.com/whoisgeorgewilliamsiii.html |url-status=live }}</ref> with the suggestion that "mark twain" refers to a running bar tab that Twain would regularly incur while drinking at John Piper's saloon in [[Virginia City, Nevada]]. Samuel Clemens himself responded to this suggestion by saying, "Mark Twain was the nom de plume of one Captain Isaiah Sellers, who used to write river news over it for the ''New Orleans Picayune''. He died in 1863 and as he could no longer need that signature, I laid violent hands upon it without asking permission of the proprietor's remains. That is the history of the nom de plume I bear."<ref>Fatout, Paul. "Mark Twain's Nom de Plume." ''American Literature'', v 34, n 1 (March 1962), pp.&nbsp;1–7. {{doi|10.2307/2922241}}. {{JSTOR|2922241}}.</ref>

In his autobiography, Twain writes further of Captain Sellers's use of "Mark Twain": <blockquote>I was a cub pilot on the Mississippi River then, and one day I wrote a rude and crude satire which was leveled at Captain Isaiah Sellers, the oldest steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, and the most respected, esteemed, and revered. For many years he had occasionally written brief paragraphs concerning the river and the changes which it had undergone under his observation during fifty years, and had signed these paragraphs "Mark Twain" and published them in the St. Louis and New Orleans journals. In my satire I made rude game of his reminiscences. It was a shabby poor performance, but I didn't know it, and the pilots didn't know it. The pilots thought it was brilliant. They were jealous of Sellers, because when the gray-heads among them pleased their vanity by detailing in the hearing of the younger craftsmen marvels which they had seen in the long ago on the river, Sellers was always likely to step in at the psychological moment and snuff them out with wonders of his own which made their small marvels look pale and sick. However, I have told all about this in "Old Times on the Mississippi." The pilots handed my extravagant satire to a river reporter, and it was published in the New Orleans True Delta. That poor old Captain Sellers was deeply wounded. He had never been held up to ridicule before; he was sensitive, and he never got over the hurt which I had wantonly and stupidly inflicted upon his dignity. I was proud of my performance for a while, and considered it quite wonderful, but I have changed my opinion of it long ago. Sellers never published another paragraph nor ever used his nom de guerre again.<ref>"[http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=works/MTDP10363.xml;style=work;brand=mtp;chunk.id=dv0050#pa001690 Autobiography of Mark Twain] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016211319/http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=works%2FMTDP10363.xml%3Bstyle%3Dwork%3Bbrand%3Dmtp%3Bchunk.id%3Ddv0050#pa001690 |date=October 16, 2015 }}." ''Volume 2; 10 September 1906'', (2013, 2008), Para. 4.</ref> </blockquote>

==Legacy and depictions==

{{Main|Mark Twain in popular culture}}

While Twain is often depicted wearing a white suit, modern representations suggesting that he wore them throughout his life are unfounded. Evidence suggests that Twain began wearing white suits on the lecture circuit, after the death of his wife in 1904. However, there is also evidence showing Twain wearing a white suit before 1904. In 1882, he sent a photograph of himself in a white suit to 18-year-old [[Edward W. Bok]], later publisher of the ''Ladies Home Journal'', with a handwritten dated note. The white suit did eventually become Twain's trademark, as illustrated in anecdotes about this eccentricity (such as the time he wore a white summer suit to a Congressional hearing during the winter).<ref name="c-a-kirk" /> McMasters' ''The Mark Twain Encyclopedia'' states that Twain did not wear a white suit in his last three years, except at one banquet speech.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zW1k-XS6XLEC&pg=PA390 |title=The Mark Twain encyclopedia|page=390|publisher=Garland Publishing |access-date=October 16, 2009 |isbn=978-0-8240-7212-4 |author1=Lemaster, J. R |author2=Wilson, James Darrell |author3=Hamric, Christie Graves |year=1993}}</ref>
{| style="margin:auto"
| [[File:Samuel L Clemens4 1940 Issue-10c.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1|The U.S. post Office issued a commemorative stamp in 1940 honoring Mark Twain]]
|[[File:Mark Twain Vanity Fair 1908-05-13.jpeg|thumb|upright=1|Caricature of Twain by [[Leslie Ward|Spy]] in the London magazine ''[[Vanity Fair (British magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'', May 1908]]
|}
In his autobiography, Twain writes of his early experiments with wearing white out-of-season:<ref name=TwainSuit>Next after fine colors, I like plain white. One of my sorrows, when the summer ends, is that I must put off my cheery and comfortable white clothes and enter for the winter into the depressing captivity of the shapeless and degrading black ones. It is mid-October now, and the weather is growing cold up here in the New Hampshire hills, but it will not succeed in freezing me out of these white garments, for here the neighbors are few, and it is only of crowds that I am afraid. I made a brave experiment, the other night, to see how it would feel to shock a crowd with these unseasonable clothes, and also to see how long it might take the crowd to reconcile itself to them and stop looking astonished and outraged. On a stormy evening I made a talk before a full house, in the village, clothed like a ghost, and looking as conspicuous, all solitary and alone on that platform, as any ghost could have looked; and I found, to my gratification, that it took the house less than ten minutes to forget about the ghost and give its attention to the tidings I had brought.<br />I am nearly seventy-one, and I recognize that my age has given me a good many privileges; valuable privileges; privileges which are not granted to younger persons. Little by little I hope to get together courage enough to wear white clothes all through the winter, in New York. It will be a great satisfaction to me to show off in this way; and perhaps the largest of all the satisfactions will be the knowledge that every scoffer, of my sex, will secretly envy me and wish he dared to follow my lead. "[http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=works/MTDP10363.xml;style=work;brand=mtp;chunk.id=dv0055#pa001821 Autobiography of Mark Twain] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016211319/http://www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=works%2FMTDP10363.xml%3Bstyle%3Dwork%3Bbrand%3Dmtp%3Bchunk.id%3Ddv0055#pa001821 |date=October 16, 2015 }}", ''Volume 2'', October 8, 1906 (2013, 2008), Paragraph 14</ref>
{{blockquote|Next after fine colors, I like plain white. One of my sorrows, when the summer ends, is that I must put off my cheery and comfortable white clothes and enter for the winter into the depressing captivity of the shapeless and degrading black ones. It is mid-October now, and the weather is growing cold up here in the New Hampshire hills, but it will not succeed in freezing me out of these white garments, for here the neighbors are few, and it is only of crowds that I am afraid.<ref name=TwainSuit/>}}

== See also ==
* [[Historic recurrence]]
* [[Mark Twain bibliography]]
* [[Mark Twain in popular culture]]
* [[National Tom Sawyer Days]]

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
{{refbegin|30em}}
* Nathan G. Alexander, [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-gilded-age-and-progressive-era/article/unclasping-the-eagles-talons-mark-twain-american-freethought-and-the-responses-to-imperialism/F85104CA5DCB59134C7D67CAC8BB7914 "Unclasping the Eagle's Talons: Mark Twain, American Freethought, and the Responses to Imperialism."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180801220904/https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-gilded-age-and-progressive-era/article/unclasping-the-eagles-talons-mark-twain-american-freethought-and-the-responses-to-imperialism/F85104CA5DCB59134C7D67CAC8BB7914 |date=August 1, 2018 }} ''The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' 17, no. 3 (2018): 524–545. {{doi|10.1017/S1537781418000099}}.
* [[Lucius Beebe]]. ''Comstock Commotion: The Story of the Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News'', [[Stanford University Press]], 1954 {{ISBN|1-122-18798-X}}
* Louis J. Budd, ed. ''Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays 1891–1910'' ([[Library of America]], 1992) ({{ISBN|978-0-940450-73-8}})
* [[Ken Burns]], [[Dayton Duncan]], and [[Geoffrey C. Ward]], ''Mark Twain: An Illustrated Biography''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001 ({{ISBN|0-375-40561-5}})
* [[Philip S. Foner]]. ''[https://archive.org/details/MarkTwainSocialCritic Mark Twain: Social Critic]''. New York: International Publishers. 1966.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20100527151833/https://www.ucmerced.edu/faculty/facultybio.asp?facultyid=95 Gregg Camfield]. ''The Oxford Companion to Mark Twain''. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 ({{ISBN|0-19-510710-1}})
* Guy Cardwell, ed. ''Mark Twain, Mississippi Writings'', ([[Library of America]], 1982) ({{ISBN|978-0-940450-07-3}})
* Guy Cardwell, ed. ''Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad & Roughing It'', ([[Library of America]], 1984) {{ISBN|978-0-940450-25-7}}
* [[Ron Chernow]]. ''Mark Twain'', Penguin Press, 2025 ({{ISBN|978-0525561729}})
* James M. Cox. ''Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor'', Princeton University Press, 1966 ({{ISBN|0-8262-1428-2}})
* Everett Emerson. ''Mark Twain: A Literary Life'', Philadelphia: [[University of Pennsylvania Press]], 2000 ({{ISBN|0-8122-3516-9}})
* [http://english.stanford.edu/bio.php?name_id=51 Shelley Fisher Fishkin] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130228061559/http://english.stanford.edu/bio.php?name_id=51 |date=February 28, 2013 }}, ed. ''A Historical Guide to Mark Twain''. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 ({{ISBN|0-19-513293-9}})
* Shelley Fisher Fishkin, ''Lighting Out for the Territory: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996 ({{ISBN|0-19-510531-1}})
* Benjamin Griffin, ed., ''Mark Twain's Civil War: "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed"''. Berkeley, California: Heyday, 2019 ({{ISBN|9781597144780}})
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140909004546/http://www.distinguishedprofessors.ku.edu/professor/harris-s Susan K. Harris], ed. ''Mark Twain, Historical Romances'' ([[Library of America]], 1994) ({{ISBN|9780-940450-82-0}})
* Hamlin L. Hill, ed. ''Mark Twain, The Gilded Age and Later Novels'' ([[Library of America]], 2002) {{ISBN|978-1-931082-10-5}}
* Jason Gary Horn. ''Mark Twain: A Descriptive Guide to Biographical Sources'', Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1999 ({{ISBN|0-8108-3630-0}})
* [[William Dean Howells]]. ''My Mark Twain'', Mineloa, NY: Dover Publications, 1997 [1910] ({{ISBN|0-486-29640-7}})
* [[Fred Kaplan (biographer)|Fred Kaplan]]. ''The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography'', New York: Doubleday, 2003 ({{ISBN|0-385-47715-5}})
* [[Justin Kaplan]]. ''Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography'', New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966 ({{ISBN|0-671-74807-6}})
* J. R. LeMaster and James D. Wilson, eds. ''The Mark Twain Encyclopedia'', New York: Garland, 1993 ({{ISBN|0-8240-7212-X}})
* Andrew Levy, ''Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era that Shaped His Masterpiece.'' New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015.
* Jerome Loving, ''Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. ({{ISBN|978-0-520-26985-9}})
* Bruce Michelson, ''Mark Twain on the Loose'', Amherst: [[University of Massachusetts Press]], 1995 ({{ISBN|0-87023-967-8}})
* Patrick Ober, ''Mark Twain and Medicine: "Any Mummery Will Cure"'' Columbia: [[University of Missouri Press]], 2003 ({{ISBN|0-8262-1502-5}})
* [[George Orwell]], [https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/twain/english/e_twain "Mark Twain – The Licensed Jester," ''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell'', vol. 2: ''My Country Right or Left, 1940–1943'', Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220221024155/https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/twain/english/e_twain |date=February 21, 2022 }}
* [[Albert Bigelow Paine]], ''[https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2988 Mark Twain, A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens]'', Harper & Bros., 1912. {{ISBN|1-84702-983-3}}
* [[Mark Perry (author)|Mark Perry]], ''Grant and Twain: The Story of a Friendship that Changed American''; also published as ''Grant and Twain: The Story of an American Friendship'', New York: Random House, 2004. {{ISBN|0679642730}}
* [[Ron Powers]], ''Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain'', New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. {{ISBN|0-306-81086-7}}
* Ron Powers. ''Mark Twain: A Life'', New York: Random House, 2005. ({{ISBN|0-7432-4899-6}})
* {{cite journal | year = 2004 | title = Twain, Howells, and the Origins of Midwestern Drama | journal = MidAmerica | volume = XXXI | pages = 25–42 | last1 = Radavich | first1 = David }}
* R. Kent Rasmussen, ''Critical Companion to Mark Twain: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work'', Facts On File, 2007. Revised edition of ''Mark Twain A to Z'' {{ISBN|0-8160-6225-0}}
* R. Kent Rasmussen, ed., ''The Quotable Mark Twain: His Essential Aphorisms, Witticisms and Concise Opinions'', Contemporary Books, 1997 {{ISBN|0-8092-2987-0}}
* Gary Scharnhorst, ed., ''Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews'', Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006. {{ISBN|9780817315221}}
** Gary Scharnhorst, ed., ''Mainly the Truth: Interviews with Mark Twain'', Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009. {{ISBN|9780817355395}}
** Gary Scharnhorst, ed., ''Twain in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates'', Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010. {{ISBN|9781587299148}}
** Gary Scharnhorst, ed., ''Mark Twain on Potholes and Politics: Letters to the Editor'', Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2014. {{ISBN|9780826220462}}
* Gary Scharnhorst, ''The Life of Mark Twain: The Early Years, 1835–1871'', Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2018. {{ISBN|9780826221445}}
** Gary Scharnhorst, ''The Life of Mark Twain: The Middle Years, 1871–1891'', Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2019. {{ISBN|9780826274304}}
** Gary Scharnhorst, ''The Life of Mark Twain: The Final Years, 1891–1910'', Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2022. {{ISBN|9780826222411}}
* Paul A. Shackel, "America's home town: fiction, Mark Twain, and the re‐creation of Hannibal, Missouri." ''International Journal of Heritage Studies'' 17.3 (2011): 197–213. [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Shackel/publication/254316024_America-s_home_town_Fiction_Mark_Twain_and_the_re-creation_of_Hannibal_Missouri/links/570ba73608ae2eb94223a774/America-s-home-town-Fiction-Mark-Twain-and-the-re-creation-of-Hannibal-Missouri.pdf online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230116060517/https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Shackel/publication/254316024_America-s_home_town_Fiction_Mark_Twain_and_the_re-creation_of_Hannibal_Missouri/links/570ba73608ae2eb94223a774/America-s-home-town-Fiction-Mark-Twain-and-the-re-creation-of-Hannibal-Missouri.pdf |date=January 16, 2023 }}
* Ben Tarnoff, ''The Bohemians: Mark Twain and the San Francisco Writers Who Reinvented American Literature.'' New York: The Penguin Press, 2014
* {{cite magazine |author=Mark Twain |title=A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It |url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/twain/menu.html |date=November 1874 |magazine=[[The Atlantic Monthly]] |pages=591–594 |location=Boston |publisher=Atlantic Monthly Co. <!-- |access-date=May 20, 2022 --> |access-date=January 22, 2009 |archive-date=February 20, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090220145523/http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/twain/menu.html |url-status=live }}
* Larzer Ziff, ''Mark Twain'', New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. {{ISBN|0195170199}}
* {{cite book |author=Anonymous |url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cartoon_portraits_and_biographical_sketches_of_men_of_the_day/Mark_Twain |title=Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day |publisher=Tinsley Brothers |others=Illustrated by [[s:Author:Frederick Waddy|Frederick Waddy]] |chapter=Mark Twain |year=1873 |location=London |page=122 |access-date=March 13, 2011 |archive-date=May 11, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110511190652/http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cartoon_portraits_and_biographical_sketches_of_men_of_the_day/Mark_Twain |url-status=live }}
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{Commons}}
{{Wikiquote}}
{{Wikisource author}}
* [http://westernamericanliterature.com/mark-twain/ Western American Literature Journal: Mark Twain]
* [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Twain Mark Twain] at ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica|Enciclopedia Britannica]]'', Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
* [https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/twain_mark Mark Twain] at ''[[The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction]]''.

===Online editions===
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/mark-twain}}
* {{Gutenberg author |id=53}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Clemens, Samuel Langhorne|name=Mark Twain|author=yes}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Mark Twain}}
* {{Internet Archive author |name=Samuel Langhorne Clemens}}
* {{Librivox author |id=9}}

===Libraries===
* [http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/MTP/ The Mark Twain Papers and Project] of the [[Bancroft Library]], [[University of California Berkeley]]. Archive of Mark Twain's papers and writings
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140327060544/http://www.buffalolib.org/content/grosvenor/mark-twain-room Mark Twain Room] at [[Buffalo & Erie County Public Library]]
* [http://archives.nypl.org/brg/19174 Samuel Langhorne Clemens collection of papers] at [[New York Public Library]]
* [http://www.shapell.org/Collection/Mark-Twain Mark Twain Original Manuscripts from 1862–1909] Shapell Manuscript Foundation
* [http://twain.lib.niu.edu/ Mark Twain's Mississippi] at [[Northern Illinois University Libraries]]
* [https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_4078617 Finding aid to the Mark Twain papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.]
* [[hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.clemenss|Samuel Langhorne Clemens Collection]]. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

{{Twain}}
{{The Adventures of Tom Sawyer}}
{{A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court}}
{{The Prince and the Pauper}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Twain, Mark}}
[[Category:Mark Twain| ]]
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[[Category:1910 deaths]]
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[[Category:Criticism of United States foreign policy|*Twain]]
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