The Life of Mark Twain

December 4, 2017
In the first volume of a projected three-volume biography, Twain scholar Scharnhorst (Mark Twain on Potholes and Politics) offers a meticulously detailed and exhaustively researched chronicle of the famous author’s life from his birth in 1835 through his move to Buffalo, New York, in 1870. Drawing on over 5,000 unpublished letters and other previously unseen archival material, Scharnhorst dutifully traces Twain’s ancestry—he “was descended from a long line of lower-cas(t)e protestants, dissenters, and rapscallions”—and childhood with a “stern” and “austere” father. Weaving Twain’s writings through the events of his life, Scharnhorst skillfully reveals the young Twain’s exposure to violence and illness in the frontier villages in which he grew up, his early desire to be a minister, days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and early anonymous and pseudonymous writings. As Twain moves west from Hannibal, Mo., to San Francisco, he begins to bolster his reputation as a writer, finally breaking through to national prominence with the story “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog.” Although the book’s attention to detail can be overwhelming and even tiresome, Scharnhorst’s thorough and careful research results in a scholarly biography that will undoubtedly be considered definitive. Photos.

Starred review from January 15, 2018
The transformation of newspaperman Samuel Clemens into popular essayist and entertainer Mark Twain.Although Twain (1835-1910) has been the subject of scores of biographies and studies, his life story has never been told, asserts Scharnhorst (Emeritus, English/Univ. of New Mexico; Owen Wister and the West, 2015, etc.), "from beginning to end from a single point of view on an expansive canvas." The author brings considerable authority and astute analysis to the first volume of his planned multivolume biography, drawing on Twain's writings, letters (more than 5,000 made available since Justin Kaplan's acclaimed biography of Twain was published in 1966), memoirs by Twain's contemporaries, and nearly everything--reviews, remarks, and scholarship--written about Twain. Although Scharnhorst admits that he has discovered no "bombshells" or "dark secrets," he offers a cleareyed, balanced portrait of the restless, irreverent, hard-drinking writer and lecturer who, no matter how much money he earned, seemed perpetually in debt. Twain worked for several newspapers after he gave up piloting on the Mississippi, with varying success. He was not well-liked by his colleagues on Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise, for example, recalled for being "a notoriously lazy grinder" who, when he should have been cranking out copy, instead sat "drumming on a cracked guitar." As a young man, he held decidedly racist views, which he "outgrew" after he moved to cosmopolitan San Francisco in 1865. As far as sex, "little is known," Scharnhorst asserts, although judging from some ribald writings, Twain "seems to have been thoroughly familiar with western bordellos" and may have been treated for venereal disease. Twain was an enthusiastic world traveler whose jaunts were funded by newspapers to which he contributed "letters" from abroad. He supplemented his income by performing as a "literary comedian" in the manner of renowned Artemus Ward, to whom he was often favorably compared. Scharnhorst ends his first volume with the publication of Twain's well-received The Innocents Abroad (1869), his marriage to the heiress Livy Langdon, and the birth of their son.A lively, richly detailed, and sharply perceptive biography.

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April 1, 2018

In 1912, two years after Mark Twain, born Samuel Clemens, died, his literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, published a hefty multivolume biography of the author. Since then, hundreds more books about Twain--including many full biographies--have appeared. Until now, however, none has challenged the scope of Paine's epic work, despite the explosion of new information and proliferation of interpretations of Twain's genius. This first volume of a new three-volume work by noted Twain authority Scharnhorst (Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English; editor, Twain in His Own Time) is thus a welcome contribution to literary scholarship. While covering Twain's busy life through 1871--by which time he was married and settled--it offers a richly documented and often engaging account of his youth in Missouri; his steamboat piloting, prospecting, and newspaper reporting years; and the journeys to Hawaii and the Old World that made him famous and launched his writing career. While Paine's biography is justly criticized for being uncritical to the point of being fawning, Scharnhorst's book sometimes leans too far in the opposite direction and is occasionally marred by armchair psychoanalysis. VERDICT An authoritative and impressive achievement that promises well for Scharnhorst's next two volumes. Recommended.--R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 2018
Surveying the distortion-filled autobiography of his friend Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Dean Howells pronounced the work a failure for readers seeking truth. In this first volume of an ambitious multivolume biography of the famous novelist, Scharnhorst endeavors to succeed where Clemens/Twain failed. The autobiographical untruths Scharnhorst must clear away include even Clemens' account of how he chose his nom de plume: probing research reveals that Clemens drew the self-designation Mark Twain not (as he claimed) from river pilots navigating rapids but rather from saloon regulars requesting credit. Similar detective work explodes myths Clemens popularized about a near brush with General Grant as a Confederate militiaman and about arduous labors as a prospector during California's Gold Rush. Most readers, however, will value more highly the true account of the financial pressures catalyzing Clemens' first literary triumphInnocents Abroad. Scharnhorst details the strokes of satiric genius that shine through this work, alongside veins of plagiarism. Besides ferreting out truths Clemens himself concealed, Scharnhorst announces his intention to challenge the misleading perspectives of previous biographersincluding those academic specialists whose single-volume tomes deliver skeletal portraits of a robust figure. The signal achievement manifested in this volume will leave readers eagerly awaiting its sequels.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

April 22, 2019
In the scrupulously chronicled second installment of an expected three-part biography (after The Life of Mark Twain: The Early Years, 1835–1871), Scharnhorst, professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico, reconstructs the period during which Samuel Clemens—aka Mark Twain—wrote many of his most popular works, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Picking up with a now world-renowned Twain moving to Elmira, N.Y., Scharnhorst humanizes rather than lionizes his subject, who struggles with writer’s block, sends amorous letters to his wife while on tour, and basks in constant attention while harrumphing he’d rather be left alone. However, Scharnhorst is careful not to bowdlerize Twain, resisting modern attempts to exonerate him of the anti-Asian prejudice in the play Ah Sin, co-written with Bret Harte. Unnecessarily weighed down by exhaustive research, the book’s tendency to linger over minute details detracts from the vivid drama at its heart, in which, as Twain’s fame and notoriety grows, he proves unable to resist speculating in disastrous ventures, leading to his and his family’s departure from their Hartford, Conn., mansion for financial exile in Europe. Despite some flaws, this remains a masterful, detailed account of America’s most famous literary wit.

Starred review from March 21, 2022
Scharnhorst (Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews), an English professor at the University of New Mexico, concludes his three-volume biography of Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), aka Mark Twain, with a fantastic account of the last two decades of the author’s life. Scharnhorst picks up in June 1891 as Twain and his family traveled to Europe, a time when even the author didn’t know “how deeply he was in debt” after an unsuccessful publishing venture. During his time abroad, Twain wrote a sequel to Tom Sawyer and met with Kaiser Wilhelm II and Oscar Wilde. But his international celebrity was no shield to devastating personal losses: his eldest daughter Susy died in 1896 from spinal meningitis, the “most traumatic event” in his life, and his wife, Livy, died a few years later. Scharnhorst conveys Twain’s grief in sharp detail, and captures Twain’s political engagement near the end of his life, too: in 1904, he campaigned against Belgium’s King Leopold II’s exploitation of the people of Congo, efforts consistent with his prior support of women’s suffrage and his outspokenness against racism. Scharnhorst uses exhaustive research and granular detail to great effect, creating a fantastic portrait of his subject. This coda to a well-lived life is a stunner.