The tone of his later novels, including The Tragedy of Pudd‘nhead Wilson and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, became cynical and dark. Having failed as a publisher and suffering losses from ill-advised investments, Twain was forced by financial necessity to maintain a heavy schedule of lecturing. Though he had left school at an early age, his genius was recognized by Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University in the form of honorary doctorate degrees. He died in his Connecticut mansion, Stormfield, on April 21, 1910.

THE WORLD OF MARK TWAIN AND A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT


1835   Samuel Langhorne Clemens is born prematurely in Florida, Missouri, the fourth child of John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens. 
1839   The family moves to Hannibal, the small Missouri town on the west bank of the Mississippi River that will become the model for the setting of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. 
1840   American newspapers gain increased readership as urban populations swell and printing technology improves. 
1847   John Clemens dies, leaving the family in financial difficulty. Sam quits school at the age of twelve. 
1848   Sam becomes a full-time apprentice to Joseph Ament of the Missouri Courier. 
1850   Sam’s brother Orion, ten years his senior, returns to Hannibal and establishes the Journal ; he hires Sam as a compositor. Steamboats become the primary means of transport on the Mississippi River.
1852   Sam edits the failing Journal while Orion is away. After he reads local humor published in newspapers in New England and the Southwest, Sam begins printing his own humorous sketches in the Journal. He submits “The Dandy Frightening the Squatter” to the Carpet-Bag  of Boston, which publishes the sketch in the May issue.
1853   Sam leaves Hannibal and begins working as an itinerant printer; he visits St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia. His brothers Orion and Henry move to Iowa with their mother. 
1854   Transcendentalism flourishes in American literary culture; Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden. 
1855   Sam works again as a printer with Orion in Keokuk, Iowa. 
1856   Sam acquires a commission from Keokuk’s Daily Post to write humorous letters; he decides to travel to South America. 
1857   Sam takes a steamer to New Orleans, where he hopes to find a ship bound for South America. Instead, he signs on as an apprentice to river pilot Horace Bixby and spends the next two years learning how to navigate a steamship up and down the Mississippi. His experiences become material for Life on the Mississippi  and his tales of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.
1858   Sam’s brother Henry dies in a steamboat accident. 
1859   Samuel Clemens becomes a fully licensed river pilot. 
1861   The American Civil War erupts, putting an abrupt stop to river trade between North and South. Sam serves with a Confederate militia for two weeks before venturing to the Nevada Territory with Orion, who had been appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as secretary of the new Territory. 
1862   After an unsuccessful stint as a miner and prospector for gold and silver, Clemens begins reporting for the Territorial Enterprise   in Virginia City, Nevada.
1863   Clemens signs his name as “Mark Twain” on a humorous travel sketch printed in the Territorial Enterprise. The pseudonym , a riverboat term meaning “ two fathoms deep,” connotes barely navigable water.
1864   After challenging his editor to a duel, Twain is forced to leave Nevada and lands a job with a San Francisco newspaper . He meets Artemus Ward, a popular humorist, whose techniques greatly influence Twain’s writing. 
1865   Robert E. Lee’s army surrenders, ending the Civil War. While prospecting for gold in Calaveras County, California, Twain hears a tale he uses for a story that makes him famous; originally titled “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” it is published in New York’s Saturday Press. 
1866   Twain travels to Hawaii as a correspondent for the Sacramento Union;  upon his return to California, he delivers his first public lecture, beginning a successful career as a humorous speaker.
1867   Twain travels to New York, and then to Europe and the Holy Land aboard the steamer Quaker City; during five months abroad, he contributes to California’s largest paper, Sacramento’s Alta California, and writes several letters for the New York Tribune. He publishes a volume of stories and sketches, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches. 
1868   Twain meets and falls in love with Olivia (Livy) Langdon. His overseas writings have increased his popularity; he signs his first book contract and begins The Innocents Abroad,  sketches based on his trip to Europe and the Holy Land. He embarks on a lecture tour of the American Midwest.
1869   Twain becomes engaged to Livy, who acts as his editor from that time on. The Innocents Abroad,  published as a subscription book, is an instant success, selling nearly 100,000 copies in the first three years.
1870   Twain and Livy marry. Their son, Langdon, is born; he lives only two years. 
1871   The Clemens move to Hartford, Connecticut. 
1872  Roughing  It, an account of Twain’s adventures out West, is published to enormous success. The first of Twain’s three daughters, Susy, is born. Twain strikes up a lifelong friendship with the writer William Dean Howells.
1873   Ever the entrepreneur, Twain receives the patent for Mark Twain’s Self-Pasting Scrapbook, an invention that is a commercial success. He publishes The Gilded Age,  a collaboration with his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner that satirizes the post-Civil War era.
1874   His daughter Clara is born. The family moves into a mansion in Hartford in which they will live for the next seventeen years. 
1876  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer  is published.
1877   Twain collaborates with Bret Harte—an author known for his use of local color and humor and for his parodies of Cooper, Dickens, and Hugo—to produce the play Ah Sin. 
1880   Twain invests in the Paige typesetter and loses thousands of dollars. He publishes A Tramp Abroad,  an account of his travels in Europe the two previous years. His daughter Jean is born.
1881   The Prince and the Pauper, Twain’s first historical romance, is published. 
1882   Twain plans to write about the Mississippi River and makes the trip from New Orleans to Minnesota to refresh his memory. 
1883   The nonfiction work Life on the Mississippi  is published.
1884  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,  a book Twain worked on for nearly ten years, is published in England; publication in the United States is delayed until the following year because an illustration plate is judged to be obscene.
1885   When Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  is published in America —by Twain’s ill-fated publishing house, run by his nephew Charles Webster—controversy immediately surrounds the book. Twain also publishes the memoirs of his friend former President Ulysses S. Grant.
1888   He receives an honorary Master of Arts degree from Yale University. 
1889   He publishes A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court,  the first of his major works to be informed by a deep pessimism. He meets Rudyard Kipling, who had come to America to meet Twain, in Livy’s hometown of Elmira, New York.
1890   Twain’s mother dies. 
1891   Financial difficulties force the Clemens family to close their Hartford mansion; they move to Berlin, Germany. 
1894   Twain publishes The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, a dark novel about the aftermath of slavery, which sells well, and Tom Sawyer Abroad,  which does not. Twain’s publishing company fails and leaves him bankrupt.
1895   Twain embarks on an ambitious worldwide lecture tour to restore his financial position. 
1896   He publishes Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc and Tom Sawyer, Detective.  His daughter Susy dies of spinal meningitis.
1901   Twain is awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Yale. 
1902   Livy falls gravely ill.