Mark Twain

“The guide I have spoken of is the only one we have had yet who knew anything,” Twain reported in the Venice chapter of the book.

The Museum Tour Guide Who Shaped Mark Twain’s Views on Race

While traveling in Venice for what would be his best-selling memoir, the author’s encounter with an African-American art expert forever changed his writing

Twain, pictured in 1902, was an eager reader of fiction, verse and non-fiction alike.

How to Read Like Mark Twain

Step one: Pretend you don't like books

The "Mark Twain" launched in early 1882 as an 18-size, key-wound movement with a subsidiary seconds function.

Mark Twain's Quest to Bring Affordable Watches to the Masses

At one time, he even invested in a watch company that launched a signature 'Mark Twain' pocket watch

The wife and daughters of Mark Twain

For Mark Twain, It Was Love At First Sight

The aspiring author knew Olivia Langdon was the one when he first laid eyes on a photograph of her

Mark Twain's love of cats pervaded his literature as well as his writing habits.

Mark Twain Liked Cats Better Than People

Who wouldn't?

You Can Own Mark Twain's Connecticut Farmhouse

The author gifted the property to his daughter in 1909. Not long after, tragedy struck

Twain's living room

Mark Twain Museum Battles Mold

A malfunctioning HVAC system led to mold contaminating 5,000 artifacts in a storage room, which will be restored over the next four months

Samuel Clemens often told stories to his children, but only one has survived.

New Mark Twain Fairy Tale Unearthed

The previously unknown—and unfinished—story was hiding in plain sight

Now, writers can find inspiration in the historic library of one of America's most famous authors.

You Can Write Inside Mark Twain’s Library

Commune with Clemens in his historic home

An 1898 portrait of Twain painted by Italian artist Ignace Spiridon, which now hangs in the Mark Twain Library in Redding.

The Library Mark Twain Built

The author helped create a library in the last town he called home—and it's full of great summer reading suggestions

Archivists Are Uncovering Lost Mark Twain Stories

Digital archives reveal Samuel Clemens, struggling journalist

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Mark Twain’s Dream

A new poem by Carol Muske-Dukes

For Twain, the “magnificent Mississippi, rolling its mile-wide tide” was the stuff of dreams (the St. Louis waterfront today).

How the Mississippi River Made Mark Twain… And Vice Versa

No novelist captured the muddy waterway and its people like the creator of Huckleberry Finn, as a journey along the river makes clear

Redpath lectures lasted well into the 20th-century (above, 1913), but when James Redpath started them in the late 1860s, he sought out speakers who could electrify an audience.

Before SXSW and Ted, A Manic Visionary Revolutionized the American Lecture Circuit

Meet James Redpath, the man who coached national celebrities on how to bring a crowd to its feet

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Mark Twain on Where Babies Come From

The American humorist lends his reasoning for his long and fruitful marriage

Portrait of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain from 1867.

Mark Twain's "My Platonic Sweetheart"

In an essay published posthumously in 1912, Mark Twain recounts his dreams of a long-lost love

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