Mark Twain and Money Mark Twain and Money
Amer Lit Realism & Naturalism

Mark Twain and Money

Language, Capital, and Culture

    • 37,99 €
    • 37,99 €

Beschreibung des Verlags

This groundbreaking volume explores the importance of economics and prosperity throughout Samuel Clemens’s writing and personal life.

Mark Twain and Money: Language, Capital, and Culture focuses on an overlooked feature of the story of one of America’s most celebrated writers. Investigating Samuel Clemens’s often conflicting but insightful views on the roles of money in American culture and identity, this collection of essays shows how his fascination with the complexity of nineteenth-century economics informs much of Mark Twain’s writing.

While most readers are familiar with Mark Twain the worldly wise writer, fewer are acquainted with Samuel Clemens the avid businessman. Throughout his life, he sought to strike it rich, whether mining for silver in Nevada, founding his own publishing company, or staking out ownership in the Paige typesetting machine. He was ever on the lookout for investment schemes and was intrigued by inventions, his own and those of others, that he imagined would net a windfall. Conventional wisdom has held that Clemens’s obsession with business and material wealth hindered his ability to write more and better books. However, this perspective fails to recognize how his interest in economics served as a rich source of inspiration for his literary creativity and is inseparable from his achievements as a writer. In fact, without this preoccupation with monetary success, Henry B. Wonham and Lawrence Howe argue, Twain’s writing would lack an important connection to a cornerstone of American culture.

The contributors to this volume examine a variety of topics, such as a Clemens family myth of vast landholdings, Clemens’s strategies for protecting the Mark Twain brand, his insights into rapidly evolving nineteenth-century financial practices, the persistence of patronage in the literary marketplace, the association of manhood and monetary success, Clemens’s attitude and actions toward poverty, his response to the pains of bankruptcy through writing, and the intersection of racial identity and economics in American culture. These illuminating essays show how pecuniary matters invigorate a wide range of Twain’s writing from The Gilded Age, Roughing It,The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, to later stories like “The £1,000,000 Banknote” and the Autobiography.

GENRE
Biografien und Memoiren
ERSCHIENEN
2017
15. August
SPRACHE
EN
Englisch
UMFANG
312
Seiten
VERLAG
University of Alabama Press
GRÖSSE
3,7
 MB

Mehr ähnliche Bücher

A Historical Guide to Mark Twain A Historical Guide to Mark Twain
2002
Mark Twain in Context Mark Twain in Context
2020
Routledge Revivals: Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian (1979) Routledge Revivals: Mark Twain as a Literary Comedian (1979)
2018
The Mythologizing of Mark Twain The Mythologizing of Mark Twain
2014
The New Mark Twain Handbook The New Mark Twain Handbook
2017
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain
2013

Mehr Bücher von Henry B. Wonham & Lawrence Howe

Andere Bücher in dieser Reihe

The Selected Literary Letters of Paul Laurence Dunbar The Selected Literary Letters of Paul Laurence Dunbar
2021
Kitchen Economics Kitchen Economics
2020
Chesnutt and Realism Chesnutt and Realism
2009
Gears and God Gears and God
2018
Echoes of Emerson Echoes of Emerson
2017
Haunting Realities Haunting Realities
2022