One of the most fascinating aspects of artistic creation involves the mysterious origins of inspiration. Some artists claim their works are inspired by an
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To call Gary Scharnhorst’s three-volume biography of Mark Twain monumental is an understatement. With the publication of the third volume, The Life of Mark Twain: The Final Years, 1891-1910, Scharnhorst, distinguished professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico, has completed the most comprehensive biography of the American author ever written. Twain has been the subject of nearly 100 biographies, but not since his official biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, published his three-volume biography in 1912 has the author been treated at such length. Paine’s massive biography is marred by the constraints put on him by Twain’s only surviving daughter, Clara Clemens, who worked to protect her father’s image, barring Paine from presenting controversial and negative aspects of Twain’s life and his work. Later biographers have had no such constraints, aside from the constraint of recounting his life in a single volume. Scharnhorst, then, has gone into more detail with
The sad thing about death and geniuses is that their mark on the world ends with the tossing of their mortal coils, but what if that weren’t the case? The writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer Samuel Langhorne Clemens, more popularly known by his penname Mark Twain, is without a doubt one of the greatest. Read more »