Mark Twain, American Humorist

Mark Twain’s reputation developed at home and abroad in the period between 1865 and 1882, years in which he went from a regional humourist to national and international fame. As this insightful book explores, in the late 1860s Mark Twain became the exemplar of a school of humour that was thought to be uniquely American.

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Mark Twain’s reputation developed at home and abroad in the period between 1865 and 1882, years in which he went from a regional humorist to national and international fame. As this insightful book explores, in the late 1860s Mark Twain became the exemplar of a school of humor that was thought to be uniquely American. As he moved intomore respectable speaking and publication venues in the 1870s, Mark Twain muddied the hierarchical distinctions between classappropriate leisure and burgeoning formsof mass entertainment, between uplifting humor and debased laughter, and between the literature of high culture and the passing whim of the merely popular.