Mark Twain

A shipload of reporters is waiting at Tilbury—but Mark Twain remembers the stevedores’ cheers most: “grimy sons of labor” whose welcome went “to the marrow.”

In 1907, Twain crosses the Atlantic to an England ready to celebrate him, and London soon turns his hotel into a court of callers, letters, and invitations. Albert Bigelow Paine’s biography follows the aging author through this tumult of public affection, among old friends and new young companions he fondly adopts as grandchildren. Yet the cheers cannot erase his private losses, and even a daughter’s note about proper behavior becomes comic material for a man who has never been easy to keep in line. How will Twain find his footing when the welcome he cherishes leaves him scarcely a moment to himself?

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