1601
By Mark Twain
()
About this ebook
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Missouri in 1835, the son of a lawyer. Early in his childhood, the family moved to Hannibal, Missouri – a town which would provide the inspiration for St Petersburg in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. After a period spent as a travelling printer, Clemens became a river pilot on the Mississippi: a time he would look back upon as his happiest. When he turned to writing in his thirties, he adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain ('Mark Twain' is the cry of a Mississippi boatman taking depth measurements, and means 'two fathoms'), and a number of highly successful publications followed, including The Prince and the Pauper (1882), Huckleberry Finn (1884) and A Connecticut Yankee (1889). His later life, however, was marked by personal tragedy and sadness, as well as financial difficulty. In 1894, several businesses in which he had invested failed, and he was declared bankrupt. Over the next fifteen years – during which he managed to regain some measure of financial independence – he saw the deaths of two of his beloved daughters, and his wife. Increasingly bitter and depressed, Twain died in 1910, aged seventy-five.
Read more from Mark Twain
The Greatest Christmas Stories of All Time: Timeless Classics That Celebrate the Season Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Vintage Christmas: A Collection of Classic Stories and Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMark Twain's Civil War Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/520 Classic Children Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prince and the Pauper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/550 Great Love Letters You Have To Read (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Classic Children's Stories (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Journeys Through Time & Space: 5 Classic Novels of Science Fiction and Fantasy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Innocents Abroad Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America?s Most-Revered Humorist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Short Stories of Mark Twain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Classic American Short Story MEGAPACK ® (Volume 1): 34 of the Greatest Stories Ever Written Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Big Book of Christmas Tales: 250+ Short Stories, Fairytales and Holiday Myths & Legends Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoughing It Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings20 Eternal Masterpieces Of Children Stories (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: New Revised Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/550 Feminist Masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to 1601
Related ebooks
1601 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (with an Introduction by Brander Matthews) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mark Twain's Hannibal, Huck, and Tom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer among the Indians: And Other Unfinished Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Europe and Elsewhere Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAdventures of Huckleberry Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5World Classics Library: Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the Dangerous Edge of Social Justice: Race, Violence and Death in America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMark Twain's Letters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mythologizing of Mark Twain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMark Twain Deluxe Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMark Twain: A Biography. Volume II, Part 1: 1886-1900 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudy Guide to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWho Is Mark Twain? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Famous Authors (Men) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStudy Guide to The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMark Twain, a Biography — Volume II, Part 1: 1886-1900 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCollected Letters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerican Palestine: Melville, Twain, and the Holy Land Mania Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLittle Pilgrimages Among the Men Who Have Written Famous Books Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Letters of Mark Twain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTaming the Bicycle (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMark Twain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taming the Bicycle (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): And Other Essays, Stories, and Sketches Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Classics For You
The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master and Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Women (Seasons Edition -- Winter) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Titus Groan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tinkers: 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for 1601
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
1601 - Mark Twain
1601
Mark Twain
.
INTRODUCTION
Born irreverent,
scrawled Mark Twain on a scratch pad, --like all other people I have ever known or heard of--I am hoping to remain so while there are any reverent irreverences left to make fun of.
--[Holograph manuscript of Samuel L. Clemens, in the collection of the F. J. Meine]
Mark Twain was just as irreverent as he dared be, and 1601 reveals his richest expression of sovereign contempt for overstuffed language, genteel literature, and conventional idiocies. Later, when a magazine editor apostrophized, O that we had a Rabelais!
Mark impishly and anonymously--submitted 1601; and that same editor, a praiser of Rabelais, scathingly abused it and the sender. In this episode, as in many others, Mark Twain, the bad boy
of American literature, revealed his huge delight in blasting the shams of contemporary hypocrisy. Too, there was always the spirit of Tom Sawyer deviltry in Mark's make-up that prompted him, as he himself boasted, to see how much holy indignation he could stir up in the world.
WHO WROTE 1601?
The correct and complete title of 1601, as first issued, was: [Date, 1601.] 'Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors.' For many years after its anonymous first issue in 1880, its authorship was variously conjectured and widely disputed. In Boston, William T. Ball, one of the leading theatrical critics during the late go's, asserted that it was originally written by an English actor (name not divulged) who gave it to him. Ball's original, it was said, looked like a newspaper strip in the way it was printed, and may indeed have been a proof pulled in some newspaper office. In St. Louis, William Marion Reedy, editor of the St. Louis Mirror, had seen this famous tour de force circulated in the early 80's in galley-proof form; he first learned from Eugene Field that it was from the pen of Mark Twain.
Many people,
said Reedy, thought the thing was done by Field and attributed, as a joke, to Mark Twain. Field had a perfect genius for that sort of thing, as many extant specimens attest, and for that sort of practical joke; but to my thinking the humor of the piece is too mellow --not hard and bright and bitter--to be Eugene Field's.
Reedy's opinion hits off the fundamental difference between these two great humorists; one half suspects that Reedy was thinking of Field's French Crisis.
But Twain first claimed his bantling from the fog of anonymity in 1906, in a letter addressed to Mr. Charles Orr, librarian of Case Library, Cleveland. Said Clemens, in the course of his letter, dated July 30, 1906, from Dublin, New Hampshire:
The title of the piece is 1601. The piece is a supposititious conversation which takes place in Queen Elizabeth's closet in that year, between the Queen, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Duchess of Bilgewater, and one or two others, and is not, as John Hay mistakenly supposes, a serious effort to bring back our literature and philosophy to the sober and chaste Elizabeth's time; if there is a decent word findable in it, it is because I overlooked it. I hasten to assure you that it is not printed in my published writings.
TWITTING THE REV. JOSEPH TWICHELL
The circumstances of how 1601 came to be written have since been officially