LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI

Book DescriptionFashioned from the sameexperiences that would inspire the masterpiece Huckleberry Finn,Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain’s most brilliant and mostpersonal nonfiction work. It is at once an affectionate evocationof the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholyreminiscence of its passing after the Civil War, a pricelesscollection of humorous anecdotes and folktales, and a uniqueglimpse into Twain’s life before he began to write.Written in a prose style that has been hailed as among the greatestin English literature, Life on the Mississippi established Twain asnot only the most popular humorist of his time but also America’smost profound chronicler of the human comedy.The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of LiteratureMemoir of the steamboat era on the Mississippi River before theAmerican Civil War by Mark Twain, published in 1883. The bookbegins with a brief history of the river from its discovery byHernando de Soto in 1541. Chapters 4-22 describe Twain's career asa Mississippi steamboat pilot, the fulfillment of a childhooddream. The second half of Life on the Mississippi tells of Twain'sreturn, many years after, to travel the river from St. Louis to NewOrleans. By then the competition from railroads had made steamboatspasse, in spite of improvements in navigation and boatconstruction. Twain sees new, large cities on the river, andrecords his observations on greed, gullibility, tragedy, and badarchitecture.About the AuthorMark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, led one of themost exciting of literary lives. Raised in the river town ofHannibal, Missouri, Twain had to leave school at age 12 and wassuccessively a journeyman printer, a steamboat pilot, a halfheartedConfederate soldier, and a prospector, miner, and reporter in thewestern territories. His experiences furnished him with a wideknowledge of humanity, as well as with the perfect grasp of localcustoms and speech which manifests itself in his writing.With the publication in 1865 of The Celebrated Jumping Frog ofCalaveras County, Twain gained national attention as a frontierhumorist, and the bestselling Innocents Abroad solidified his fame.But it wasn't until Life on the Mississippi (1883), and finally,The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), that he was recognizedby the literary establishment as one of the greatest writersAmerica would ever produce.Toward the end of his life, plagued by personal tragedy andfinancial failure, Twain grew more and more pessimistic—an outlooknot alleviated by his natural skepticism and sarcasm. Though hisfame continued to widen—Yale & Oxford awarded him honorarydegrees—Twain spent his last years in gloom and exasperation,writing fables about "the damned human race."Book Dimensionlength: (cm)17.1 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)10.4