A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN THE WEIRD WEST

MARK TWAIN

Trascorse i primi anni di vita a Hannibal, sulle rive del Mississipi (paesaggio che ricorrerà nelle sue opere). Dopo aver lavorato come litografo (appena dodicenne) e poi come pilota fluviale sul Mississippi, partecipò alla guerra civile. Seguì un periodo di viaggi con il fratello Orion, durante il quale intraprese una fortunatissima carriera di conferenziere. Conclusa la successiva avventura di minatore e cercatore d'oro in Nevada, iniziò la carriera giornalistica, che lo vide collaborare a diversi quotidiani e lo portò, come inviato, da un continente all'altro. Dal 1865 i suoi racconti, apparsi prima su riviste e poi raccolti in volume, ottennero un crescente successo, rivelando le sue qualità di caricaturista sottile. Nel 1870 si sposò con Olivia Langdon, compagna anche nelle avventure letterarie, e si stabilì a Hartford, dove tuttavia dimorò solo nei momenti di sosta tra un giro e l'altro di conferenze. Con i fortunatissimi romanzi Le avventure di Tom Sawyer (1876), Vita sul Mississippi (1883) e Le avventure di Huckleberry Finn (1884) creò un'epopea americana con tratti umoristici e picareschi. Nelle opere successive si accentuarono quei sintomi di disagio che già si muovevano nella coscienza dei suoi primi personaggi (Wilson lo svitato, 1894; L'uomo che corruppe Hadleyburg, 1900).

Samuel Clemens was born November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. When he was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a Mississippi river port, where he received a public school education. After the death of his father in 1847, Clemens was apprenticed to a Hannibal printer and later wrote for the Hannibal Journal, then owned by his older brother. Subsequently he was a journeyman printer in New York City, Philadelphia, and other cities and then a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi until the Civil War brought an end to travel on the river. In 1861 he served briefly in the Confederate army and went to Nevada, then Utah Territory, where he worked in the silver mines. In 1862 he became a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada, and in 1863 began signing his articles with the pseudonym "Mark Twain," a Mississippi phrase meaning two fathoms deep. In 1864 he moved to San Francisco. In 1865, he received national recognition when the New York Saturday Press published his humorous stories of frontier life, later republished as his first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867).
In 1867 he lectured in New York City, and the same year he visited France, Italy, and the Holy Land. It was in France that he met a Russian mariner named Vladimir Michaelovich Isokov. Somehow, Isokov convinced Twain to join him on a grand journey to the Antarctica, hoping to find passage to a fabled inland paradise. Unfortunately, bad weather and even worse luck forced the expedition to return after twelve months. Longing for his homeland, Twain returned to America, learning of the Great Quake that destroyed his former home in San Francisco. In 1870 he married Olivia Langdon and established residence in Hartford, Connecticut. Since then he has continued to write.