Mark Twain: Difference between revisions

 

He died on April 21, 1910, the day after Halley's Comet reached its perihelion, or closest pass to the sun. He was born two weeks after its prior perihelion in 1835. As Clemens himself said the year before he died, "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it."

 

* ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]''

* ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]]''

* ''[[The Prince and the Pauper]]''

 

 

* ''The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County'' (1867)

** [[Crowning Moment of Funny]]: "Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."

* ''[[The Mysterious Stranger]]'' (Written c. 1890-1910, published 1969)

 

* [[Bluenose Bowdlerizer]]: After Clemens' death, his eldest surviving daughter Clara and his literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, were quick to suppress Clemens' anti-religious and anti-imperialist writings.

** A recent edition of ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' has removed every instance of the word "nigger" from the book and replaced it with the word "slave," as well as altering "Injun" to "Indian." This has been done in order to allay fears of parents and schools hesitant to assign the book due to racial issues.

* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism]]: Always very cynical. [[It Got Worse]] after he outlived his wife and all but one of his children.

 

 

Twain appears as a character in numerous stories, TV shows, movies and comics, often as a [[Historical In-Joke]].

* Mark Twain was the central character in a series of historical mysteries by Peter Heck called, unsurprisingly, ''The Mark Twain Mysteries''.