The Life of Mark Twain: The Middle Years 18711891 (Volume 2) (Mark Twain and His Circle)

About this book

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2020 The second volume of Gary Scharnhorsts three-volume biography chronicles the life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens between his move with his family from Buffalo to Elmira (and then Hartford) in spring 1871 and their departure from Hartford for Europe in mid-1891. During this time he wrote and published some of his best-known works including Roughing It The Gilded Age The Adventures of Tom Sawyer A Tramp Abroad The Prince and the Pauper Life on the Mississippi Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court. Significant events include his trips to England (187273) and Bermuda (1877); the controversy over his Whittier Birthday Speech in December 1877; his 187879 Wanderjahr on the continent; his 1882 tour of the Mississippi valley; his 188485 reading tour with George Washington Cable; his relationships with his publishers (Elisha Bliss James R. Osgood Andrew Chatto and Charles L. Webster); the death of his son Langdon and the births and childhoods of his daughters Susy Clara and Jean; as well as the several lawsuits and personal feuds in which he was involved. During these years too Clemens expressed his views on racial and gender equality and turned to political mugwumpery; supported the presidential campaigns of Grover Cleveland; advocated for labor rights international copyright and revolution in Russia; founded his own publishing firm; and befriended former president Ulysses S. Grant supervising the publication of Grants Memoirs. The Life of Mark Twain is the first multi-volume biography of Samuel Clemens to appear in more than a century and has already been hailed as the definitive Twain biography.