Mark Twain's wit is scattered throughout our public consciousness. The characters and tales created by Twain loom large in our American tradition, as do his famous quotations—from “Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well” to "The report of my death was an exaggeration." Across pop culture, Twain's work still resonates—Bugs Bunny was accidentally transported to King Arthur's court and mistaken for a "dwagon" by Sir Elmer of Fudde; Bart and Nelson became Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn in a tall tale on The Simpsons; and adaptations of The Prince and the Pauper, in which a prince and pauper who look alike temporarily switch places, have been done by entertainment giants ranging from Barbie to Bollywood.
Twain is perhaps best known for American classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), in which a group of mischievous young boys have adventures alongside the Mississippi, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), in which a young boy runs away from home alongside an enslaved man named Jim. Twain's books used witty satire and an adventurous tone to both represent and criticize American life, and he's considered quintessential to the birth of a distinctly American canon of literature.
Mark Twain’s early life
Mark Twain—real name Samuel Clemens—was born on November 30, 1835, in the ironically named Florida, Missouri. Clemens was a sickly child who liked to test the limits of his mom's patience. (Later, when he asked her whether she worried about him often as a child, she said yes. "Afraid I wouldn't live?" he asked. "No," she said, "afraid you would.") His father was more serious, a businessman who was often in debt but always promised his children that someday they'd all be rich. For Samuel's childhood, the Clemens family lived in Hannibal, Missouri, a town on the Mississippi River that would expose him to the violent realities of class and slavery, and inspire many of his later stories.
Clemens's father died when he was just 11 years old, and he got to work not long after. Clemens worked as a type-setter, riverboat pilot, and reporter, and lived everywhere from Philadelphia to Iowa to California, getting a broad look at life in the United States in the process. He would avoid the Civil War for the most part, briefly joining a Confederate unit before leaving to live with his older brother in Nevada territory. By the 1870s, he'd realized that writing humor was his calling, and he started gaining traction with the sketches and stories that would eventually bloom into his famous novels.
Twain’s writing career and later life
Clemens tried many different pen names over the years. W. Epaminondas Adrastus Perkins, for example, or my personal favorite, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass. But, ironically, the one that stuck was actually stolen. Riverboat pilot Isaiah Sellers had been using Mark Twain as a pen name for years. Clemens heard (mistakenly) that Sellers was dead in 1863, and just started using it.
It was as Mark Twain that he would publish all of his most iconic works. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published in 1876, would make him a household name, and has never gone out of print. It centered young teens in a town much like the one Twain grew up in along the Mississippi. One of the characters in that book, Huck, had his own story to tell; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in 1885, and is considered an American classic. Other major works would include autobiographical travelogues, like Roughing It (1872) or A Tramp Abroad (1880), and famous, much-adapted stories satirizing social hypocrisy, such as The Prince and the Pauper (1881) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).
Unfortunately, despite so much success, the end of his life was difficult. He struggled with debt, and lost his wife and three of his four children. He spent much of his time lecturing across Europe and writing more serious works, including a travelogue and essays that satirized and critiqued everything from Belgian imperialism to lynching in the United States.
Twain was born in 1835, the same year Halley's Comet passed by Earth. He later wrote that he expected to go out with it, too, joking that God said: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together." Twain was right. In 1910, Halley's Comet returned, and Mark Twain died.
Mark Twain’s legacy
"All modern American literature," Ernest Hemingway said in 1935, "comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Twain brought the American vernacular to the forefront in his books. His witty approach to literature, challenging stereotypes and fighting traditional structures of power, his characters and his archetypes, were and are distinctly American. In 2015, The New York Times wrote: "Mark Twain wittily distrusted everything bogus, inflated, predictable or empty." His use of everyday American speech, the characters he created, and the stories he told allied him with the common American man, with the layperson. This attitude would inspire many American writers and stories to come, and cemented his work as a key, formative chapter in the legacy of American literature.
The best books by Mark Twain
Set in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, a town inspired heavily by Hannibal, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer features a group of boys led by a mischievous, clever boy named Tom Sawyer, having wild adventures and growing up some in the process. You've likely seen at some point a tribute to Tom's most classic scheme: forced to whitewash a fence on a glorious day perfect for wandering and playing, he manages to convince all his friends that it's actually the best game, really, to paint the fence, until they're trading him for the privilege.
Even if you've read this one before, you simply have to listen to this rendition by the funny, lovable Nick Offerman (who calls Tom Sawyer a "great scam artist" and "true American hero"). He brings Tom and the entire book to life, the perfect match for the witty and quintessentially American Mark Twain.
In Tom Sawyer, there's one character, the good-natured Huck, who Twain felt had his own story to tell. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck runs away from home, fleeing his abusive dad, alongside Jim, a Black man fleeing slavery. As they travel the Mississippi together, they discover many moments of human cruelty, and their friendship leads Huck to reconsider many Southern prejudices that underpinned slavery.
While the book has become controversial in recent years for its stereotypes and use of racial slurs, it has long been considered a classic of the American canon and of young adult literature, and has been used in school curriculums for decades. In this edition, Frodo Baggins himself—the iconic Elijah Wood—narrates, powering the classic story of adolescence with youthful excitement.
Whether you've seen this classic told though the lens of Mickey Mouse, Barbie, or any other iconic character, you've certainly encountered an homage to this story before. That'll make it all the more entertaining and intriguing to dig into the original, narrated here by Matthew Frow, who captures the British cast of characters and brings the story to life.
Tom Canty is a poor street urchin who runs into Prince Edward of England. They're fascinated by each other, both because they're so different and because they look exactly alike, so they switch clothes, inciting an unfortunate misunderstanding. The two soon have to live life in each other's shoes. Tom realizes he's way out of his depth, while the future King of England faces the reality of thousands of his subjects, and goes on to become a better king for it.
In this patently ridiculous story, a 19th-century mechanic, Hank Morgan, hits his head and is magically transported to medieval Camelot, in the time of King Arthur's Round Table and the wizard Merlin. Morgan casts himself as a magician as a way to explain his "inventions" that he hopes will make the medieval world a little bit better. Despite his best efforts, he struggles to improve anyone's lives thanks to the workings of rival Merlin and of the people who would much prefer the feudalistic, exploitative society continues exactly as it is.
Even if you've read this one before, you simply have to listen to this rendition by Nick Offerman. The man who played Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation with an exquisite dry wit is a perfect fit for Hank Morgan, a pragmatic inventor who encounters no shortage of absurdities.
Books inspired by and about Mark Twain
Percival Everett's Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning book reimagines and retells The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Jim's point of view. As he runs away with Huck, Jim is hoping to reach a free state and to rescue his family. It's the same story, at least in outline, but in telling it from the point of view of an enslaved man seeking freedom, it becomes an entirely different, clear-eyed, and bold story.
The audio edition of James is something truly special; in 2024, it was named Audible's Audiobook of the Year. The Audible Editors wrote: "This sharply funny, harrowing, first-person narrative is exquisitely performed by narrator Dominic Hoffman, who adds layers of depth and grace to the voice of Jim. Audible Editors and listeners agree: James is as close to perfect as an audiobook can be."
In this Audible Original, Nick Offerman takes a journey through the meals that played a role in Mark Twain's life, exploring eight of his favorite foods. It's both a re-creation of a dinner party that Mark Twain would have loved and a chance for Offerman to explore Twain's biography and his journeys across the United States.
He spends time analyzing the world as Twain himself would have experienced it, including the racism and prejudice that existed all around him in America at the time. Offerman is accompanied by Andrew Beahrs, a food historian and author who helps to root their explorations in the history of America's food and its culinary traditions.
Ron Chernow's biographies have been highly acclaimed and celebrated—you may have heard of his work on Alexander Hamilton, a biography so compelling that it inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda's blockbuster musical. His biography of Twain is highly anticipated. Chernow did years of research digging into archives, manuscripts, letters, and more to accurately depict both the man, Samuel Clemens, and the author, Mark Twain. It's performed by veteran audiobook narrator Jason Culp, who formerly took on Stacy Schiff's biography of Samuel Adams.
While fans of literature and American history will surely want to check this one out, Chernow's biographies are so accessible and popular that more casual listeners will be excited to dig into Twain's life, too. A likely bestseller, this book will let listeners into the life of one of America's most iconic writers.
