San Antonio College Library

"Although this biography of Mark Twain begins when Twain is 31 ... the book is a full account of Twain, his life and his work related both to his early years and to the 'Gilded Age' of his mature life."

This book considers first the problems of style and structure Mark Twain faced at the outset of his career, and then traces his handling of these problems in nine of his principal works. Since questions of technique necessarily involve questions of meaning, I have dealt also with his ethical ideas. The inquiry leads ultimately to the consideration of how his writing reveals a conflict between the dominant culture of his day and an emergent attitude...

James M. Cox pursues the development of Mark Twain's humor through all its forms, concentrating upon the humor itself as the transfiguring power that converted all the "serious" issues and emotions of Mark Twain's life and time into narratives designed to evoke helpless laughter. Mark Twain: The Fate of Humor, captures the great heart of a writer who imagined freedom in the slave society of his youth and discovered slavery in the free country of his...