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The famous American writer Mark Twain (Samuel Lenghorne Clemens), who lived later than Whitman, had the opportunity to see with even greater clarity how far his homeland was from the ideal of true democracy. Despite this, Twain in most of his works remained a cheerful writer, a wonderful humorist.

Most of Twain's works are connected with the traditions of American folk humor, which gives his numerous stories a special charm, a bright national coloring. In the most insignificant phenomena, Twain notices the funny and talks about the most ordinary things inventively and witty. It shows the mercantile spirit of the bourgeoisie, the thirst for profit and the unscrupulousness of politicians. In the short story "How I Was Chosen for Governor" he ridicules the election campaign, which has turned into a competition of slanderers. In the story "Journalism in Tennessee" depicts the rude morals of the American press, the pursuit of sensation, the unprincipled struggle of competing newspapers. In such world-famous stories as “A Conversation with an Interviewer”, “My Watch”, “How I Edited an Agricultural Newspaper”, etc., the ingenuity of the author attracts, who creates situations that are unusually funny in their unexpectedness and absurdity.

Twain is a very observant writer, an excellent connoisseur of psychology and everyday life. ordinary people America, the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois environment. On his life path he met people of various professions. The son of a provincial judge, he began working at the age of 12: as an apprentice in a printing house, as a typesetter, as a pilot on a steamboat, and, finally, as a journalist. From the memories of the steamer on which he sailed along the Mississippi, the writer's pseudonym arose: "Mark Twain" - a term used to measure the depth of the river.

Twain's childhood memories provided the material for two world-famous favorite children's books, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Tom and his friends are looking for romantic adventures and freedom away from the bourgeois provincial town, from the boredom of religious Sunday schools, from the tedious instructions of school teachers. With the observation and subtle humor characteristic of Twain, the customs of the American provinces of the first half of the 19th century are outlined. And Tom's childhood experiences are revealed by the writer with touching love and penetration into the psychology of a teenager.

Tom Sawyer is one of the most charming characters in children's literature. Even if in his inventions and pranks he sometimes does not know the measure, but in serious, and sometimes dangerous alterations, Tom remains a faithful and courageous friend. Speaking at the trial as a witness, Tom was not afraid to take the old man accused of murder under protection and tell the truth about the real killer - the terrible and vengeful Indian Joe. He is by no means always truthful, but we believe much more in his affection for Aunt Polly, who replaces his mother, than in the love for her of Tom's "exemplary", but selfish, sometimes treacherous and prudent brother Sid.

When Mark Twain wrote the books about Tom and Huck, slavery had already been abolished in America. But the oppression of the Negroes and racial inequality remained, as they continue to exist today. Twain could not be indifferent to this shameful phenomenon of American life.

In the story about a little tramp, freedom-loving Huck Finn, his friend, a black slave, a runaway Negro Jim, is constantly next to him. They travel on a raft along the Mississippi River: Huck escaped from a rich widow who sheltered him, but tortured him with her annoying instructions, and Jim seeks to get to free states where there is no slavery.

Twain is not only a cheerful humorist, but also a brilliant satirist. His book A Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) exposes the feudal-monarchical survivals that still survive in some of the bourgeois countries of Europe. The writer, just like his hero, comes to the conclusion that only a revolution can give freedom to an oppressed person. And when the Russian revolution of 1905 took place, it met with warm sympathy from Twain.

Almost all children in our country know interesting story written by M. Twain - "The Prince and the Pauper" (1882). It tells about the fate of the little ragamuffin Tom Canty and English prince Edward. The action takes place in the 16th century. By pure chance, Tom becomes the heir to the throne for a while, and Prince Edward, instead of Tom, finds himself among the beggars. Then a little prince and learns the truth about the bitter fate of his people, about the cruel arbitrariness of kings, their ministers and officials. Gradually, the views and attitude to life of a child who was previously spoiled and did not know human grief are changing. And, returning again to his palace, Edward becomes a kind king who cares about the welfare of his people. And Tom Canty, although sometimes he got into ridiculous situations, not knowing court life, delights the reader: a beggar boy from the people, without realizing it, was often much wiser than all important and experienced ministers.

Many of Twain's works were not published in his homeland until recently. His statements about American "democracy" and colonial policy are too harsh.

Only recently did Twain's letters and diaries, his unfinished autobiography, pamphlets, etc., see the light of day. They tell that an honest artist, who passionately loved his people, experienced excruciating disappointments, seeing how democratic ideals were trampled in his country.

Mark Twain (eng. Mark Twain, pseudonym, real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens - Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 1835-1910) - an outstanding American writer, satirist, journalist and lecturer. At the peak of his career, he was probably the most popular figure in America. William Faulkner wrote that he was "the first truly American writer, and we have all since been his heirs", and Ernest Hemingway wrote that "all modern American literature came out of a book by Mark Twain called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Of the Russian writers, Maxim Gorky and Alexander Kuprin spoke especially warmly about Mark Twain.

Clemens claimed that the pseudonym "Mark Twain" (Eng. Mark Twain) was taken by him in his youth from the terms of river navigation. Then he was a pilot's assistant on the Mississippi, and the term "mark twain" was the minimum depth suitable for the passage of river vessels (this is 2 fathoms, 365.76 cm). However, there is an opinion that in reality this pseudonym was remembered by Clemens from the time of his fun days in the West. They said “Mark Twain!” when, after drinking a double whiskey, they did not want to pay immediately, but asked the bartender to write it down on the account. Which of the variants of the origin of the pseudonym is correct is unknown. In addition to "Mark Twain", Clemens signed once in 1896 as "Mr. Louis de Conte" (fr. Sieur Louis de Conte).

Sam Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri, USA. He was the third of four surviving children of John and Jane Clemens. When Sam was still a child, the family moved to the city of Hannibal (in the same place, in Missouri) in search of a better life. It was this city and its inhabitants that were later described by Mark Twain in his famous works, especially in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876).

Clemens' father died in 1847, leaving many debts. The eldest son, Orion, soon began publishing a newspaper, and Sam began to contribute as much as he could as a printer and, occasionally, as a writer of articles. Some of the newspaper's liveliest and most controversial articles had just come from the pen of a younger brother, usually when Orion was away. Sam himself also occasionally traveled to St. Louis and New York.

But the call of the Mississippi River eventually drew Clemens to a career as a steamboat pilot. A profession that, according to Clemens himself, he would have practiced all his life if the civil war had not put an end to private shipping in 1861. So Clemens was forced to look for another job.

After a short acquaintance with the people's militia (he colorfully described this experience in 1885), Clemens left the war for the west in July 1861. Then his brother Orion was offered the position of secretary to the governor of Nevada. Sam and Orion traveled across the prairies in a stagecoach for two weeks to a Virginia mining town where silver was mined in Nevada.

The experience of living in the Western United States shaped Twain as a writer and formed the basis of his second book. In Nevada, hoping to get rich, Sam Clemens became a miner and began mining silver. He had to live for a long time in the camp with other prospectors - this way of life he later described in literature. But Clemens could not become a successful prospector, he had to leave silver mining and get a job at the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in the same place in Virginia. In this newspaper, he first used the pseudonym "Mark Twain". And in 1864 he moved to San Francisco, California, where he began to write for several newspapers at the same time. In 1865, Twain's first literary success came, his humorous story "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras" was reprinted throughout the country and called "the best work of humorous literature created in America to this point."

In the spring of 1866, Twain was sent by the Sacramento Union newspaper to Hawaii. During the journey, he had to write letters about his adventures. Upon their return to San Francisco, these letters were a resounding success. Colonel John McComb, publisher of the Alta California newspaper, invited Twain to tour the state, giving exciting lectures. The lectures immediately became wildly popular, and Twain traveled all over the state, entertaining the audience and collecting a dollar from each listener.

Twain's first success as a writer was on another journey. In 1867, he begged Colonel McComb to sponsor his trip to Europe and the Middle East. In June, as Alta California correspondent for the New York Tribune, Twain travels on the Quaker City steamer to Europe. In August, he also visited Odessa, Yalta and Sevastopol (in the "Odessa Herald" of August 24, the "Address" of American tourists written by Twain is placed). Letters written by him on a trip to Europe were sent and printed in a newspaper. And upon his return, these letters formed the basis of the book "Simples Abroad". The book was published in 1869, distributed by subscription and was a huge success. Until the very end of his life, many knew Twain precisely as the author of "Simples Abroad". During his writing career, Twain traveled to Europe, Asia, Africa and even Australia.

In 1870, at the height of the success of The Stupid Abroad, Twain married Olivia Langdon and moved to Buffalo, New York. From there he moved to the city of Hartford, Connecticut. During this period, he lectured frequently in the United States and England. Then he began to write sharp satire, sharply criticizing American society and politics, this is especially noticeable in the collection of short stories Life on the Mississippi, written in 1883.

Twain's greatest contribution to American and world literature is the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Many consider it generally the best literary work ever created in the United States. Also very popular are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and the collection real stories"Life on the Mississippi". Mark Twain began his career with humorous couplets, and ended with terrible and almost vulgar chronicles of human vanity, hypocrisy and even murder.

Twain was an excellent orator. He helped create and popularize American literature as such, with its distinctive themes and colorful, offbeat language. Having received recognition and fame, Mark Twain spent a lot of time searching for young literary talents and helping them to break through, using his influence and the publishing company he acquired.

Twain was fond of science and scientific problems. He was very friendly with Nikola Tesla, they spent a lot of time together in Tesla's laboratory. In his work A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Twain introduced time travel, which resulted in many modern technologies appeared in England during the time of King Arthur. You had to have a good understanding of science to create such a plot. And later, Mark Twain even patented his own invention - improved braces for pants.

Two other well-known hobbies of Mark Twain were playing billiards and smoking pipes. Visitors to Twain's home sometimes said that there was such tobacco smoke in his office that Twain himself could no longer be seen.

Twain was a prominent figure in the American Anti-Imperial League which protested the American annexation of the Philippines. In response to the massacre, which killed about 600 people, he wrote The Philippines Incident, but the work was not published until 1924, 14 years after Twain's death.

However, the success of Mark Twain gradually began to fade. Until his death in 1910, he suffered the loss of three of his four children, and his beloved wife, Olivia, also died. In their later years Twain was deeply depressed, but he could still joke. In response to an erroneous obituary in the New York Journal, he famously said, "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Twain's financial situation was also shaken: his publishing company went bankrupt; he invested a lot of money in a new model printing press, which was never put into production; plagiarists stole the rights to several of his books.

In 1893, Twain was introduced to the oil tycoon Henry Rogers, one of the directors of the Standard Oil Company. Rogers helped Twain to profitably reorganize his financial affairs, and the two became close friends. Twain often visited Rogers, they drank and played poker. We can say that Twain even became a family member for the Rogers. Sudden death Rogers in 1909 deeply shocked Twain. Although Mark Twain repeatedly publicly thanked Rogers for saving him from financial ruin, it became clear that their friendship was mutually beneficial. Apparently, Twain significantly influenced the mitigation of the tough temper of the oil magnate, who had the nickname "Cerberus Rogers." After the death of Rogers, his papers showed that friendship with the famous writer made a real philanthropist and philanthropist out of the ruthless miser. During his friendship with Twain, Rogers began to actively support education, organized educational programs especially for African Americans and talented people with disabilities.

Twain himself died on April 21, 1910 from angina pectoris (angina pectoris). A year before his death, he said: "I came in 1835 with Halley's Comet, a year later it arrives again, and I expect to leave with it." And so it happened.

In the city of Hannibal, Missouri, the house in which Sam Clemens played as a boy, and the caves that he explored as a child, and which were later described in the famous Adventures of Tom Sawyer, have been preserved, tourists now come there. Mark Twain's home in Hartford has been turned into his personal museum and declared a National Historic Site in the United States.

Already from his first steps, Twain was not deprived of the attention of either readers or critics. The volume of critical literature devoted to Twain is enormous. "Twenian" represents a special independent trend in the history of American studies. And although the researchers of his work have done significant analytical and publishing work, the most famous American writer is still not fully understood.

Mark Twain lived at a turning point for national history country, when its whole appearance changed sharply and rapidly. The beginning of Twain's work coincided with the civil war (1861-1865) - key event in the life of the United States, which was called the second American revolution. As a result of the collapse of slavery, broad opportunities opened up for the capitalist development of the country. The pace of industrial production accelerated, and the influx of emigrants to the United States increased. The structure of the American economy was changing; the first monopolies and trusts appeared. Twain witnessed the first strikes, the birth of influential political parties which expressed the interests of both industrial workers and farmers. At the end of the 19th century, Twain was among those who condemned the Spanish-American war, which was openly aggressive. Before his eyes, the economic power of the country was strengthening, its scientific potential was growing.

Twain's life experience was exceptionally rich, unique in its own way. This found a diverse reflection in his books, in which there is a pronounced autobiographical beginning. This life experience was one of the decisive factors that determined the writer's constant interest in history and its lessons. Twain had a sense of life in its movement, internal dynamics.

Twain traveled constantly. More than ten times the writer crossed the Atlantic. He traveled all over Europe, becoming a witness to the most important socio-political conflicts and upheavals. It can be said that history was unfolding before his eyes.

The artist endowed great strength fantasy, Twain worked in various literary genres: was a novelist, storyteller, publicist, memoirist. A huge role in the creative heritage of Twain is occupied by documentaries. The writer was active in the genre travel essay. He was an educator and humanist, an artist sensitive to all social and political events, which was confirmed by the publications of the writer's archive. For a long time, Twain was assigned the “image” of a comedian, a minion of fate, alien to the formulation of serious historical and philosophical problems.

Twain's literary school was the newspaper, and his favorite genres for a long time there remained a satirical essay, a comic sketch, a humoresque, often using the moves and techniques of narration typical of folklore. A special role in the development of Twain was played by the folklore created on the “frontier” (the border advancing to the West, beyond which lay territories where civilization had not yet arrived). The "frontier" in Mark Twain's childhood was Hannibal, at the time of his youth - Nevada and California, where he became famous as an outstanding journalist and coryphaeus of humor.

Starting with the textbook story "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras" (1865), creative features were defined that persist in Twain's early essay books ("Simples Abroad", 1869, "Light", 1872, "Life on the Mississippi", 1883): proximity to the forms of a folklore anecdote, an abundance of vivid everyday details that create a picture of reality with its contrasts and paradoxes, a sense of the powerful, inexhaustible energy of life, humor, understood as “the ability to make people laugh while maintaining full seriousness”. Under the onslaught of humor, the writer believed, "nothing can resist." Embodied in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the philosophical tale The Prince and the Pauper (1882), Mark Twain's ideal is freedom from everything conditional and lifeless, organic democracy, faith in the rationality of history and in the spiritual powers of an ordinary person. The mockery of artificiality and decayed forms of relationships that would be swept away by progress corresponded to the mindset that prevailed in America at that time, ready to recognize Twain as its national genius.

However, Mark Twain's reputation began to change with the release of a book about Huck Finn, which contained tragic episodes in which young heroes discover the real everyday life of a backwater with its stupidity and self-interest, the problem of moral choice arises in the face of injustice, violence and racism.

Having moved from California to Hartford in 1870, Mark Twain was constantly in contact with the world of industrialists and businessmen, in which, after his marriage, he himself became involved. The writer was imbued with an increasingly undisguised disgust for the "Gilded Age", as he called the then era of rapid economic growth, accompanied by rampant corruption and trampling on democratic principles. The novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), the short story "Coot Wilson" (1896), pamphlets and satirical stories of the same period speak of an increase in accusatory beginnings in Twain's prose, which gradually becomes the most implacable critic of American social institutions and mass social psychology. Mark Twain's dominant metaphor was a hoax, growing to universal proportions: both the moral standards established in society, society itself, and spiritual values ​​turn out to be fakes, which in fact speak only of the self-delusion of a person who does not want to realize how insignificant and miserable he is in his aspirations. .

Twain's increasing misanthropy, of which the repeatedly remade "The Mysterious Stranger" remained a monument, was partly due to the fact that unsuccessful business ventures led him to bankruptcy in 1894, as a result of which he had to undertake exhausting trips to read his stories for the sake of money, and then a round-the-world tour, described in the book of essays Along the Equator (1897). This trip turned Mark Twain into a passionate opponent of imperialism and the colonial ambitions of America, which he sharply condemned in a series of pamphlets written in the early 1900s.

Not all of them were published: Twain's entourage sought to preserve in the public mind the image of an unshakable lover of life and a carefree humorist, forcing him to hide especially angry pages even from his family, in particular the chapter of his autobiography, which he dictated to his secretary in the last years of his life. The mood of these years is conveyed by the epigraph to the book “Along the Equator”: “Everything human is sad. The secret source of humor is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven."

Mark Twain, during his lifetime, became something of a "major icon of American culture" and a "national monument." The critic Brander Matthews was the first to recognize him as a great writer in his voluminous preface to the collected works of Twain at Harper's in 1899. He ranked Twain on a par with Chaucer and Cervantes, Molière and Fielding, and declared that no other writer expressed such full of all the diversity of the American experience.

In the very first responses to Mark Twain's death in 1910, the writers Hamlin Garland and Booth Tarkington in the USA, Alexander Kuprin and Korney Chukovsky in Russia expressed the general opinion that he was the true embodiment of America. B. Tarkington wrote: “... when I think about the true United States, Mark Twain became part of this concept for me. For while he was a full citizen of the world, he was also the Soul of America." Garland, emphasizing that Twain "remained to the last American of the Midwest", called him "a representative of our literary democracy ... along with Walt Whitman."

Archibald Henderson in 1910 put it this way: Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, "the two great interpreters and incarnations of America," represent "democracy's highest contribution to world literature." In the future, this idea will become a commonplace for many discussions about the place of Twain in US literature. Two years later, Albert B. Payne, Twain's literary executor and author of the most comprehensive biography of him, declared that Mark Twain is "the most characteristic American in his every thought, in every word, in every deed."

Paradoxically, such desperate antagonists as Van Wyck Brooks and Bernard De Voto agreed on this: one of the few points of agreement they had was the perception of Twain as a "national writer". Brooks' famous book, The Torture of Mark Twain (1920), which argued that Twain had failed as a great satirist because his development had been shackled and held back by exposure to a rigid puritan environment, began by stating that Mark Twain "was undeniably the epitome of character." and features of modern America", "something of the archetype of the national character for a long era." But so did De Voto, who programmatically titled his book "Mark Twain's America" ​​(1932), he just had a different attitude towards the old America of the frontier. If Brooks saw spiritual poverty in it, Devoto found just fruitful creative impulses for literature. He called an entire chapter of this work "The American as an Artist" and argued that it was in Twain's work that " american life became great literature" because "he was more familiar than other writers with the national experience in its most diverse manifestations." The best works of Twain, according to Devoto, were "born of America and this is their immortality. He wrote books in which the very essence of national life was expressed with undeniable truthfulness.

The greatest American writers of the 20th century recognized Twain as the founder of the national literary tradition. "The true father of American literature" and "the first truly American artist of royal blood" called Twain Henry Lewis Mencken in 1913. This opinion was shared to varying degrees by Theodore Dreiser, Carl Sandburg, Thomas Wolfe, Waldo Frank and others. Two great writers of the word, two antagonists, as you know, not inclined to agree with each other on most issues, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner agreed that real American literature was born from the work of Mark Twain. Hemingway stated this in 1935, Faulkner twenty years later. A similar convergence can be noted in two more antipodes, in two great poets: Twain's novel "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" admired both Thomas S. Eliot, a native of Missouri, who moved to England and became a British subject, and Wystan Hugh Auden, an Englishman who took root in United States. Eliot in 1950 and Auden in 1953 declared Twain's hero to be the embodiment of the national character.

Since then, this opinion has become self-evident. One need only take any history of American literature, any collection of critical works on Twain, to be convinced of this. In the 1984 anniversary collection of works on Twain's main novel, his characters - Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, the Connecticut Yankee and Dupe Wilson - and a hundred years after their creation are perceived as "symbols of a new nation, its rudeness, immaturity and moral uncertainty."

The culmination in the study of Mark Twain in his homeland was probably the jubilee year 1985, when it was 150 years since his birth and 100 years since the publication of his main novel. By this time, a very extensive and diverse literature about Twain had already accumulated, so meticulous bibliographers calculated that in a hundred years about 600 articles and books about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn alone appeared. It would seem that after this the flow of publications should subside at least for a while, as happened with other figures and anniversaries, but over the past twenty years it has not only not dried up, but even increased and, I must say, very impressively, so that in terms of the amount written - more than a hundred books dedicated to Twain - these two decades can argue with the three quarters of a century that have passed since the death of the writer. The fact is that American literary criticism in the second half of the 20th century, having adopted the tradition of meticulousness and fundamentalism of German science of the century before last, added to this its own enterprise and acquired a completely industrial character. Now it is the most powerful and massive, the most branched and specialized, and, finally, the most technically equipped and advanced literary criticism in the entire history of this field of activity. It has developed a variety of areas and layers - from textual criticism to literary theory. Of course, this could not but affect the study of the main national writer of the United States.

(real name - Samuel Langhorn Clemens)

(1835-1910) father of american realism

Mark Twain is a satirist and humorist, the creator of beautiful stories and novels that provide a deep and comprehensive picture of American life for more than half a century.

Samuel Clemens was born in the state of Missouri, in the village of Florida, in the family of a lawyer. Soon the family moved to the city of Hannibal on the banks of the Mississippi, where little Sam spent his short childhood. After the death of his father, he was given as an apprentice compositor to a printing house. He published his first literary experiments in a newspaper. Clemens spent a lot of time in the printers' library, and a huge fascinating world American and European literature fascinated the young man. From the age of 18, he roamed the cities of Mississippi as an itinerant typesetter. Life on a large navigable river enriched the inquisitive young man with a mass of impressions, the “gods” of the river, the pilots, especially subdued him. The future writer became a pilot and drove ships along the Mississippi. The river became the cradle of his pseudonym. Mark twen (the term for measuring the water level: “Measure two!”) - this cry of the lot one meant a safe path for the pilot.

A civil war broke out between North and South. The young pilot was mobilized into the army of the slave-owning South, and he had to hastily flee from the military authorities to Nevada. Having fallen into the atmosphere of a mining silver fever, he spent several years in quartz mines in search of a rich vein. It was not possible to enrich himself, but from time to time the newspaper "Enterprise" published notes sent to him under the pseudonym Josh. Here, in Virginia City, a few hundred kilometers away, he came on foot, leaving the mining camp.

Already the first humorous stories made him popular. teacher by literary technique was already a famous writer Bret Hart, author of the book "Happiness of the Roaring Camp". Mark Twain named his first collection of stories after the work that made him famous, The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras (1865). Then came the travel book "Simples Abroad" (1869) based on the impressions of a trip to Europe and Palestine. Both books were a great victory for the young writer. Sparkling humor, based on the wisdom and humanism of folk humoresques, has entered American literature. "Simples Abroad" played a huge role in shaping the national consciousness of Americans.

Mark Twain replaces the serious tone of the traditional American story with a mischievous and cheerful narrative, giving it the form of an anecdote, parody, hoax, fantasy, burlesque, comically playing with absurdities and inconsistencies. The writer depicts the diverse world in a wide variety of genres - notes, sketches (sketches), humoresques, essays, articles, feuilletons, pamphlet stories, parody miniatures.

In the collection Old and New Essays (1875), which includes short stories written at the turn of the 70s, the satirical exposure of the blatant contradictions of American society, merciless and cruel competition in it, continues. In satirically pointed, contrasting paintings, the writer characterizes, in his own words, "the abyss between what should be and what is." He created a whole gallery of satirical portraits of American “church businessmen” trading in oil, cotton, speculators on the grain exchange (the story “Important Correspondence”), figures of the American Bible Society, accomplices of the bankers Morgan and Du Pont. The author depicts the venality of government agencies, senators and congressmen ("The George Fisher Case", "The Case of the Meat Delivery"), exposing the false ideology hiding behind the word "freedom" ("The Mysterious Visit", "How I was Chosen for Governor", "Journalism in Tennessee"), opposes the war with the Indians, angrily castigates American racism ("Goldsmith's friend is abroad again" - in Russian "Letters from a Chinese"). He stands for the honor and conscience of the "sons of Lincoln" corrupted by the ideology of racism. But bitterness, mischief and fun side by side in every story.

A different style in The Gilded Age (1873), written in collaboration with Charles Warner, where Mark Twain debunks American plutocracy and congressionalized robbery, venal law and the press. The satirist develops a grotesque style - here is a humorous exaggeration, and a large-scale satirical caricature, an unexpected displacement of the tragic into the comical plane, an abundance of parodic techniques. He foresees the main disaster of the country in the transformation of politics into business. The thirst for enrichment embraces both the layers of the poor and the ordinary citizens of America. The title of the novel has become a household name for the time of speculation and scams that corroded American society after civil war cynicism and acquisitiveness.

In 1870, after a trip to Europe and marriage, Mark Twain settled in Hartford, Connecticut, where he lived until 1891. Here he created the so-called Epic of the Mississippi River: essays "Old Times on the Mississippi" (1875), "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876), "Life on the Mississippi" (1883), "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884). From the bourgeois reality of America, the writer turns to her past times. Yes, and in past America there was a lot of cruel and wild, false and absurd. And boy Tom is a rebel. He opposes both sanctimonious piety, and against the stagnant life of the townsfolk, and against the boredom of Puritanism in the family and school. The symbol of love of freedom becomes - already forever in the work of Mark Twain - a mighty river. It was a hymn to childhood, transcribed into prose, "the charming epic of youth" (John Galsworthy).

Tom's childish mind is free from deadening conventions that induce stupefying boredom. Fumbling with a poodle in the church during the Sunday service violated the prim church rituals. But after all, the adult flock is also happy with the unexpected entertainment, with difficulty restraining laughter. The routine and formalism of school life, which for Tom is “prison and shackles”, reflects the dull and miserable life of the American philistinism. And if Tom is not crippled by this deadly routine, it is only because he lives by other interests. His decisive and courageous character is formed in the fight against real misadventures and prejudices, superstitious fears. The unbridled fantasy of Tom - "the first inventor" - protects spiritual world a teenager from the deadening influence of an inert society.

The inhabitants of St. Petersburg perceive the noble aspirations of Tom's friend, Huck Finn - independence, love of freedom, contempt for the benefits of civilization - contemptuously, as folly, self-will.

The living life of Tom and Huck is contrasted with the sleepy stupor of adults. Here Mark Twain appears as a master of depicting a conflict, a portrait, a psychological motivation for actions. This is the next step in the skill of a realist writer.

In the fairy tale novel The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Mark Twain draws an analogy between modern America and medieval England in terms of the inhumanity of laws. The just young ruler Tom Canty - the "Prince of Poverty" - rejected despotic laws, and used the state seal to crack nuts. A wise human ruler needs neither seals, nor decrees, nor officials.

This is a fascinating, dynamic novel with all the arsenal of poetic means of a fairy tale: the relegation of action to the old days, the fulfillment of desires, incredible adventures, a happy ending, based on a paradox - the prince receives royal rights from the hands of a beggar.

America's most painful problem, slavery, is at the heart of Mark Twain's central novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). The author describes the touching friendship between a white boy Huck and an adult Negro Jim. At the center of the novel is the idea of ​​hostility to the American people of the proprietary, anti-human system of America, dominated by the owners of gold and human lives. The most important dramatic situation of the novel is connected with the decision of Huck and Tom to "steal the Negro from slavery." A novel of great social power has been turned into a utopia. This reflected an era of fierce class fighting in America. There could be no real freedom, except freedom in turning to nature. The novel ends with the hunt for the Negro, rounding up like a wild beast.

Many writers have considered the Huck and Jim book to be their favorite. E. Hemingway owns the words: “All modern American literature came out of one book by M. Twain, which is called “Huckleberry Finn”.

M. Twain in this novel not only reflected the ideological and social aspects, but also became the founder of the new American literary language enriched with dialectal forms.

In 1889, the writer's last novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, appeared. The action in the work is transferred to England of the VI century. The novel was Mark Twain's response to the growing opposition to the emerging American workers' associations. In Chicago, after a demonstration at which a bomb was thrown by a provocateur, 19 workers were sentenced to death. Roman defended the workers' right to power, as they represent the entire nation. Yankee delivers an impassioned speech about the purifying role of the French Revolution in the 18th century.

In 1895, M. Twain made an exhausting trip with public lectures to Australia, New Zealand, to Ceylon, to India and South Africa hoping to get out of debt after failing to start a publishing company.

In many works of this period, bitter notes are intensified: “Coot Wilson”, “Personal Memories of Joan of Arc” (1896), pamphlets “To a Man Walking in Darkness” (1901) and others. But he still saw in laughter a militant the enemy of all abominations and the support of human fortitude in a world of falsehood, exploitation and violence.

Twain was highly valued in Russia. M. Gorky wrote an essay about meeting him in America, and A. Kuprin also wrote about him.