10 items | 232 visits
This trail offers a brief introduction to the life and work of Mark Twain.
Updated on Dec 21, 09
Created on Dec 21, 09
Category: Entertainment & Arts
URL:
To begin, read this brief biography of Twain's life, provided by the editors of The Heath Anthology of American Literature.
You can view these short videos of Twain re-enacted by Mike Randall to get some notion of what it might have been like to see Twain speak.
View this video of Hal Holbrook, the most famous Twain impersonator and star of "Mark Twain Tonight!", expounding as Twain on religion and war.
You can listen to audio clips on this page of various actors attemtping to re-create the voice of Mark Twain.
To attempt to imagine what it might have been like to hear Twain speak, read this newspaper account of his visit to Minneapolis in 1895.
Read this short story "A True Story". Twain claimed that it was in fact true, though it is always difficult to tell with him. This version includes illustrations that appeared when it was published in Sketches, Old and New in 1875. This page is maintained by the University of Virginia.
Read this version of Twain's Old Times on the Mississippi hosted by the University of North Carolina. This comes from the 1875 Atlantic Monthly serialization of the stories as they first appeared.
Read Chapter 1 (69-73) and Chapter 2 "A 'Cub' Pilot's Experience; or, Learning the River" (217-224).
Twain did work as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River from 1857-1861, and these stories are based on his experiences.
This is the introductory material to Twain's story "The War Prayer" as it appeared in the 1923 version of the story when it was published by Harper & Row in the collection Europe and Elsewhere. The page is maintained by the University of Virginia.
Continue along the list to read the story itself.
Read Twain's short story "The War Prayer" on this page. The story was originally published in Harper's Monthly magazine in 1916. This text is from the 1923 version of the story published by Harper & Row in the collection Europe and Elsewhere. The page is maintained by the University of Virginia.
Continue along the list to get more context for the story.
Scroll down to the "American Opposition to the War" section to read about Twain's response to the Philippine-American war. This is the context for Twain's "The War Prayer."
10 items | 232 visits
This trail offers a brief introduction to the life and work of Mark Twain.
Updated on Dec 21, 09
Created on Dec 21, 09
Category: Entertainment & Arts
URL: