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Mark Twain: Books
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In 1872, Twain published a second piece of travel literature, Roughing It, as a semi-sequel to Innocents. Roughing It is a semi-autobiographical account of Twain's journey to Nevada and his subsequent life in the American West. The book lampoons American and Western society in the same way that Innocents critiqued the various countries of Europe and the Middle East. Twain's next work kept Roughing It's focus on American society but focused more on the events of the day. Entitled The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, it was not a travel piece, as his previous two books had been, and it was his first attempt at writing a novel. The book is ... notable because it is Twain's only collaboration; it was written with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner.
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Mark Twain's early books were sold by subscription; they sold well, for Twain prided himself on gauging public taste. Many were not issued until subscription agents had secured enough advance orders to make them surely profitable. As a traveling lecturer, he helped sell his books, and his books helped pack his lectures. He was probably the best-known and certainly among the most prosperous writers of his generation. Unsatisfied, he reached for more. When The Prince and the Pauper did not sell as he thought it should, he established his own publishing firm, which did well for a while.
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Twain and his brother traveled for more than two weeks on a stagecoach across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, visiting the Mormon community in Salt Lake City along the way. These experiences became the basis of the book Roughing It, and provided material for The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Twain's journey ended in the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a miner.[16] Twain failed as a miner and found work at a Virginia City newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise.[17] On February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous travel account "LETTER FROM CARSON - re: Joe Goodman; party at Gov. Johnson's; music" with "Mark Twain".[18]
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Twain made a lot of money from writing his books, but he lost money by investing in inventions. So he went to England where living was cheaper. He was there for nine years. But then Twain came face to face with a $150,000 debt. So then for a year he went on a worldwide tour giving lectures. He then paid his debts and returned to Connecticut in 1900.
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Mark Twain spent the remaining three years completing his official autobiography, concluding with the death of his beloved wife. Four months later, on the evening of 10 April 1910, he flipped through a book and bade his doctor 'goodbye'. Thence he drifted into eternal slumber.
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Twain wrote of his cruise to Europe and Palestine in The Innocents Abroad (1869), a highly successful travel book that is a delightful combination of humor and shrewd observation. The Innocents Abroad shows Twain at his irreverent best, debunking the awestruck and uncritical admiration of many Americans for European civilization. Besides supplying the material for the book, the cruise brought him the friendship of Charles Langdon, whose sister Olivia married Twain in 1870.
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