United States History - 19th Century - General & Miscellaneous, United States History - General & Miscellaneous, US & Canadian Literary Biography, Civilization - History
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Overview
Beginning in 1835, the birth year of Samuel Clemens, and extending through the Gilded Age, Mark Twain’s America depicts the vigorous social and historical forces that produced the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Bernard DeVoto catches a people moving west: Twain’s own family drifting down the Ohio, emigrants of every stripe, the famous and the obscure. Answering genteel critics such as Van Wyck Brooks, who blamed the American frontier for stifling Twain’s genius, DeVoto shows that, in fact, Twain’s early days in Nevada and California made a writer of him. Mark Twain’s America, first published in 1932, enriched by western humor and supernatural slave lore, is an enduring work of American literary and cultural criticism.Editorials
New York Times
“One of the most beautiful, deep-seeking books on America that we have . . . An exploration, salty, tingling, astonishingly well-informed, of the frontier backgrounds that fed and explain Mark Twain.”—New York TimesNew York Times
“One of the most beautiful, deep-seeking books on America that we have . . . An exploration, salty, tingling, astonishingly well-informed, of the frontier backgrounds that fed and explain Mark Twain.”—New York Times
Publishers Weekly -
The famous 1932 work of literary and cultural criticism. (Apr.)Book Details
Published
June 1, 1997
Publisher
Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, c1997.
Pages
351
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780803266070