Marriage, Tramping Abroad, and Success

In 1870 Twain married Olivia ‘Livy’ Langdon (1845-1904) with whom he would have four children. Three died before they reached their twenties but Clara (1870-1962) lived to the age of eighty-eight. The Twain’s home base was now Hartford, Connecticut, where in 1874 Twain built a home, though they traveled often. Apart from numerous short stories he wrote during this time and Tom Sawyer, Twain also collaborated on The Gilded Age (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

For some years Twain had lost money in various money making schemes like mining, printing machines, the Charles L. Webster Publishing Co., and The Mark Twain Self-Pasting Scrap Book though he never lost his sense of humour. In 1892, friend and fellow humorist and author Robert Barr, writing as ‘Luke Sharp’ interviewed Twain for The Idler magazine that he owned with Jerome K. Jerome. Twain’s novel The American Claimant (1892) was followed by The Tragedy of Pudd'Nhead Wilson (1894), first serialized in Century Magazine. Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) was followed by Tom Sawyer, Detective in 1896. His favourite fiction novel, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896) was first serialised in Harper’s Magazine. By 1895, unable to control his debts, he set off on a world lecture tour to Australia, Canada, Ceylon, India, New Zealand, and South Africa to pay them off. Following the Equator (1897) is his travelogue based on his tour, during which he met Mahatma Gandhi, Sigmund Freud, and Booker T. Washington.

With another successful lecture tour under his belt and now much admired and celebrated for his literary efforts, Mark, Livy and their daughter Jane settled in New York City. Yale University bestowed upon him an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1901 and in 1907 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters by Oxford University. The same year A Horse's Tale and Christian Science (1907) were published. While traveling in Italy in 1904, Livy died in Florence. For Twain’s 70th birthday on 30 November 1905 he was fêted at Delmonico’s restaurant in New York, where he delivered his famous birthday speech, wearing his trademark all-year round white suit. That year he was also a guest of American President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt at the White House and addressed the congressional committee on copyright issues. He was also working on his biography with Albert Bigelow Paine. His daughter Jane became very sick and was committed to an institution, but died in 1909 of an epileptic seizure. In 1908 Twain had moved to his home ‘Stormfield’ in Redding, Connecticut, though he still actively traveled, especially to Bermuda.

Mark Twain died on 21 April 1910 in Redding, Connecticut and now rests in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Livy’s hometown of Elmira, New York State, buried beside her and the children. A memorial statue and cenotaph in the Eternal Valley Memorial Park of Los Angeles, California states: “Beloved Author, Humorist, and Western Pioneer, This Original Marble Statue Is The Creation Of The Renowned Italian Sculptor Spartaco Palla Of Pietrasanta.” Twain suffered many losses in his life including the deaths of three of his children, and accumulated large debts which plagued him for many years, but at the time of his death he had grown to mythic proportions as the voice of a spirited and diverse nation, keen observer and dutiful reporter, born and died when Halley’s Comet was visible in the skies.

“Death, the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose peace and whose refuge are for all—the soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved.” —Twain’s last written statement

Fiction

• 
  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
  
• 
  A Double Barrelled Detective Story
  
• 
  A Horse's Tale
  
• 
  Huckleberry Finn
  
• 
  Letters from the Earth
  
• 
  Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
  
• 
  The $30,000 Bequest
  
• 
  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  
• 
  The American Claimant
  
• 
  The Gilded Age
  
• 
  The Mysterious Stranger
  
• 
  The Prince and the Pauper
  
• 
  The Tragedy of Pudd'Nhead Wilson
  
• 
  Tom Sawyer Abroad
  
• 
  Tom Sawyer, Detective
  

• Non-Fiction

  • 
    A Tramp Abroad
    
  • 
    Chapters from My Autobiography
    
  • 
    Christian Science
    
  • 
    Editorial Wild Oats
    
  • 
    Following the Equator
    
  • 
    Is Shakespeare Dead?
    
  • 
    Life on the Mississippi
    
  • 
    Roughing It
    
  • 
    The Innocents Abroad
    

• Short Stories

  • 
    A Burlesque Biography
    
  • 
    The Californian's Tale
    
  • 
    A Dog's Tale
    
  • 
    Edward Mills and George Benton: A Tale
    
  • 
    The First Writing Machines
    
  • 
    The Five Boons of Life
    
  • 
    A Helpless Situation
    
  • 
    Italian with Grammar
    
  • 
    Italian without a Master
    
  • 
    A Telephonic Conversation
    
  • 
    Was it Heaven? Or Hell?
    
  • 
    1601
    
  • 
    The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
    
  • 
    A Burlesque Autobiography
    
  • 
    The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut
    
  • 
    How to Tell a Story
    
  • 
    Extracts from Adam's Diary
    
  • 
    Eve's Diary
    
  • 
    The Loves Of Alonzo Fitz Clarence And Rosannah Ethelton
    
  • 
    About Magnanimous-Incident Literature
    
  • 
    The Canvasser's Tale
    
  • 
    An Encounter With An Interviewer
    
  • 
    Rogers
    
  • 
    Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
    
  • 
    The Curious Republic of Gondour
    
  • 
    A Memory
    
  • 
    Dan Murphy
    
  • 
    Curious Relic For Sale
    
  • 
    A Reminiscence of the Back Settlements
    
  • 
    A Royal Compliment
    
  • 
    The Approaching Epidemic
    
  • 
    The European War
    
  • 
    The Wild Man Interviewed
    
  • 
    Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again
    
  • 
    The Stolen White Elephant
    
  • 
    The £1,000,000 Bank Note
    

• Essays

  • 
    As Concerns Interpreting The Deity
    
  • 
    At The Shrine Of St. Wagner
    
  • 
    Concerning Tobacco
    
  • 
    The Death Of Jean
    
  • 
    Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
    
  • 
    How To Make History Dates Stick
    
  • 
    The Memorable Assassination
    
  • 
    On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying
    
  • 
    A Scrap Of Curious History
    
  • 
    A Simplified Alphabet
    
  • 
    Taming The Bicycle
    
  • 
    The Turning Point Of My Life
    
  • 
    William Dean Howells
    
  • 
    Plymouth Rock and the Pilgrims
    
  • 
    Last Words of Great Men
    
  • 
    The War Prayer
    
  • 
    General Washington's Negro Body-servant
    
  • 
    Wit Inspirations of the "Two-year-olds"
    
  • 
    An Entertaining Article
    
  • 
    A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury
    
  • 
    Amended Obituaries
    
  • 
    A Monument to Adam
    
  • 
    A Humane Word from Satan
    
  • 
    The New Guide of the Conversation in Portuguese and English
    
  • 
    Advice to Little Girls
    
  • 
    Post-mortem Poetry
    
  • 
    The Danger of Lying in Bed
    
  • 
    Portrait of King William III
    
  • 
    Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?
    
  • 
    Punch, Brothers, Punch
    
  • 
    The Great Revolution In Pitcairn
    
  • 
    Paris Notes
    
  • 
    Legend Of Sagenfeld, In Germany
    
  • 
    Speech On The Babies
    
  • 
    Speech On The Weather
    
  • 
    Concerning The American Language
    
  • 
    Introductory to 'Memoranda'
    
  • 
    About Smells
    
  • 
    A Couple of Sad Experiences
    
  • 
    The 'Tournament' in A.D. 1870
    
  • 
    The Tone-Imparting Committee
    
  • 
    Our Precious Lunatic
    
  • 
    Paul Bourget
    
  • 
    What is Man?
    

• Poetry

  • 
    O Lord, Our Father