Mark Twain
Mark Twain’s most famous book is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. “Hemingway said that all American fiction comes from Huckleberry Finn. That’s true, in the sense that Twain invented a way of looking at the American experience and putting it into fiction. I think almost every American writer has to acknowledge that.” Robert McCrum.
“Twain always had a lot of schemes, but his major one was a typesetting machine. That was actually a great idea, and if he had put more money in and had more time it probably would have panned out and become profitable. But it didn’t, he lost almost all of his money and went on this lecture tour. His is an enormous trip. He travels all around the world by steamship on a lecture tour, largely around the British Empire – stopping off in India, Australia, South Africa.” Paul Theroux who included Twain’s Following the Equator in the best travel books.
Books by Mark Twain
“Mark Twain is a great comedian, and he gives you easy access to the whole Enlightenment push against the Adam and Eve story.” Read more...
The best books on Adam and Eve
Stephen Greenblatt, Literary Scholar
“I chose the book largely because I think Mark Twain…is a major innovator: he expanded our sense of what the nineteenth-century U.S. novel could do, all while dramatizing how slavery’s legacy persisted into Reconstruction and the Gilded Age—and on into the present day. Almost everything beautiful and troubling about this novel comes back to Twain’s complex decision to focalize a tale of shocking brutality through the perspective of a child.” Read more...
The Best 19th-Century American Novels
Nathan Wolff, Literary Scholar
“All of these books that I have chosen helped me on my way, and made me want to write a book myself. These are books that inspire writing. Mark Twain is always taught as the man who wrote Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, not the man who wrote Following the Equator. It’s the book of a man who loves to travel and loves meeting people. His is an enormous trip. He travels all around the world by steamship on a lecture tour, largely around the British Empire – stopping off in India, Australia, South Africa. He had travelled in Europe before, but Europe doesn’t figure in this book. It’s more the tropical, equatorial world.” Read more...
Paul Theroux, Travel Writer
“In 1867, Mark Twain accompanied a group of American Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land. As part of this excursion, they also enter Russia and various places in and around continental Europe. In this book, he sends them up marvellously – their pretensions, their messianic belief that they were better than anyone else in the world and their inability to understand what was going on around them. It’s a wonderfully wry look at a certain type of American who is striding the world, probably at just about the stage where America was about to take over the world.” Read more...
The best books on Americans Abroad
Charles Glass, Journalist
Interviews where books by Mark Twain were recommended
The best books on Americans Abroad, recommended by Charles Glass
The much-travelled writer and broadcaster tells us about misunderstandings and misadventures of Americans in foreign lands
The Best Travel Books, recommended by Paul Theroux
Travel is a leap in the dark, says Paul Theroux and one that will leave you a different person at the other end. He recommends five travel books that inspired him, from Mark Twain at sea to VS Naipaul in India
The Best 19th-Century American Novels, recommended by Nathan Wolff
In the novels of the 19th century, the United States comes alive with all its contradictions and complications. Nathan Wolff, a professor of English at Tufts and author of Not Quite Hope and Other Political Emotions in the Gilded Age, introduces us to his picks of the best 19th-century American novels, including two works of historical fiction and a memoir that influenced the novel form.
The Great American Novel, recommended by Lawrence Buell
Albeit an object of satire and overreach, the ‘Great American Novel’ remains a vital concept in American literature, encouraging writers to capture the essence of national culture and history, argues Lawrence Buell, Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. He talks us through the origins of the phrase and nominates five novels as contenders.
The Best Novels in English, recommended by Robert McCrum
Journalist Robert McCrum spent two years selecting the best novels ever written in English. Here he narrows it down to just five: a perfect introduction to the best fiction the English language has to offer.
The best books on Adam and Eve, recommended by Stephen Greenblatt
Who were Adam and Eve, really? Over many centuries, the origin story has undergone countless transformations. The Pulitzer Prize-winner and Harvard professor Stephen Greenblatt chooses five books that explore the history of Adam and Eve, and tells us why the world isn’t ready to leave the narrative of Eden behind
