When I’m playful, I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic ocean for whales. I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder. —Life on the Mississippi Mark
Mark Twain pseud. of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835–1910, American author, b. Florida, Mo. As humorist, narrator, and social observer, Twain is unsurpassed in American literature. His novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a masterpiece of humor, characterization, and realism, has been called the first (and sometimes the best) modern American novel.—continue at Columbia Encyclopedia Biographical Note from Harvard Classics. ) Pronunciation: tw from The American Heritage®
WORKS
Jim Smily and His Jumping Frog
From the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction
Bartlett’s Twain Quotations
Epitomal selections by John Bartlett.
Twain, Mark, 61883 to 62235
Entries from the Columbia World of Quotations.
WRITINGS ABOUT TWAIN
“Mark Twain ”
Chapter by Stuart P. Sherman with bibliography from the Cambridge History of American Literature
“Mark Twain ”
Chapter in Carl Van Doren’s the American Novel
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