There are to-day, all over the world, men and women and children who owe a debt of almost personal gratitude to Mark Twain for the joy of his humour and the charm of his personality. In the future they will, I doubt not, seek and welcome opportunities to acknowledge that debt. My own experience with the works of Mark Twain is in no sense exceptional. From the days of early childhood, my feeling for Mark Twain, derived first solely from acquaintance with his works, was a feeling of warm and, as it were, personal affection. With limitless interest and curiosity, I used to hear the Uncle Remus stories from the lips of one of our old family servants, a negro to whom I was devotedly attached. These stories were narrated to me in the negro dialect with such perfect naturalness and racial gusto that I often secretly wondered if the narrator were not Uncle Remus himself in disguise. I was thus cunningly prepared, “coached” shall I say, for the maturer charms of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. With Uncle Remus and Mark Twain as my preceptors, I spent the days of my youth—excitedly alternating, spell-bound, between the inexhaustible attractions of Tom, Huck, Jim, Indian Joe, the Duke and the Dauphin, and their compeers on the one hand; and Brer Rabbit, Sis Cow, and a thousand other fantastic, but very real creatures of the animal kingdom on the other.

Certain happenings as recorded in “Mark Twain: A Biography” will be found to differ materially from the same incidents and episodes as set down in the writings of Mr. Clemens himself. Mark Twain’s spirit was built of the very fabric of truth, so far as moral intent was concerned, but in his earlier autobiographical writings — and most of his earlier writings were autobiographical — he made no real pretense to accuracy of time, place, or circumstance — seeking, as he said, “only to tell a good story”— while in later years an ever-vivid imagination and a capricious memory made history difficult, even when, as in his so-called “Autobiography,” his effort was in the direction of fact.

Автор: Мария Боброва
Название: Марк Твен
Издательство: М.: Государственное издательство художественной литературы, 1961 г.
Формат: FB2
Страниц: 503
Размер: 2,51 Мб

Литературное наследие Марка Твена вошло в сокровищницу мировой культуры, став достоянием человечества. Великие демократические традиции в каждой национальной литературе живой нитью связывают прошлое с настоящим, освящают давностью благородную борьбу передовой литературы за мир, свободу и счастье человечества. За пятидесятилетний период своей литературной деятельности Марк Твен — сатирик и юморист — создал изумительную по глубине, широте и динамичности картину жизни народа.

Автор: Максим Чертанов
Название: Марк Твен
Издательство: М.: Молодая гвардия, 2012 г.
Серия: Жизнь замечательных людей (ЖЗЛ)
Формат: FB2
Страниц: 480
Размер: 6,55 Мб

Остроты Марка Твена (1835–1910) не поддаются исчислению, а прижизненная популярность — описанию: именно его называют первым блоггером и первой литературной звездой. В России Твен известен, прежде всего, как юморист и автор великолепных детских книг, но этим его дар не исчерпывается: он писал любовные романы, детективы, научную фантастику и богословские трактаты. Он изобретал подтяжки, шпильки, календари, детские кроватки; дважды становился миллионером и разорялся; его обожали короли и революционеры, атеисты и священники; ради него отменялись правила уличного движения. Родившийся с приходом кометы Галлея и вместе с ней покинувший Землю, Марк Твен не перестает будоражить публику: он — единственный писатель, умудряющийся «с того света» издавать новые книги. Об этих и еще более удивительных эпизодах биографии американского классика рассказывает автор.

Автор: Морис Мендельсон
Название: Марк Твен
Издательство: М.: Молодая гвардия, 1964 г.
Серия: Жизнь замечательных людей (ЖЗЛ), Вып. 16 (263).
Формат: FB2
Страниц: 432
Размер: 4,47 Мб

В настоящем издании представлена биография Марка Твена — прозаика, публициста, классика мировой литературы.
За последние несколько десятилетий объем напечатанной «твенианы» существенно увеличился. На рубеже 50-х и 60-х годов двадцатого столетия то там, то здесь появлялись публикации вовсе неизвестных раньше или позабытых рассказов, памфлетов, статей Твена. Недавно были впервые обнародованы такие ценнейшие произведения, как «Рыцари труда» — новая династия» и «Письма с Земли».

Sketches New and Old is a collection of short stories by Mark Twain. It was published in 1875. All the stories are fictional except for "The Case of George Fisher." It includes the short story "A Ghost Story", among others.

Nowhere is the human being more truly revealed than in his letters. Not in literary letters — prepared with care, and the thought of possible publication — but in those letters wrought out of the press of circumstances, and with no idea of print in mind. A collection of such documents, written by one whose life has become of interest to mankind at large, has a value quite aside from literature, in that it reflects in some degree at least the soul of the writer.
The letters of Mark Twain are peculiarly of the revealing sort. He was a man of few restraints and of no affectations. In his correspondence, as in his talk, he spoke what was in his mind, untrammeled by literary conventions.

These speeches will address themselves to the minds and hearts of those who read them, but not with the effect they had with those who heard them; Clemens himself would have said, not with half the effect. I have noted elsewhere how he always held that the actor doubled the value of the author’s words; and he was a great actor as well as a great author. He was a most consummate actor, with this difference from other actors, that he was the first to know the thoughts and invent the fancies to which his voice and action gave the color of life. Representation is the art of other actors; his art was creative as well as representative; it was nothing at second hand.

The works reprinted in this volume, all written between 1868 and 1902, demonstrate Mark Twain’s reliance on what has come to be known as the Matter of Hannibal—the “realities, not inventions” of his early life in Missouri, which inspired much of his best-known work.

Christian Science is a 1907 book by the American writer Mark Twain (1835–1910). The book is a collection of essays Twain wrote about Christian Science, beginning with an article that was published in Cosmopolitan in 1899. Although Twain was interested in mental healing and the ideas behind Christian Science, he was hostile towards its founder, Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910).