With his books Alexander Hamilton, Grant, and Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow established himself as America’s premiere biographer of the 21st Century. With Mark Twain (Penguin Press, 2025), Chernow adds further luster to his already sparkling reputation. Given its length — 1,033 pages — I will review the first two parts of Chernow’s book, ending on page 442, in this blog and the remaining 591 pages in my first blog of September.
Suffice it to say, that Chernow’s biography of the great American author and humorist is both comprehensive and detailed; panoramic and focused. In the opening section, labeled “Afloat,” Chernow examines the different events and people that shaped the life of young Samuel Langhorne Clemens from his birth in the small town of Florida, Missouri to his marriage to Olivia “Livy” Langdon on February 2, 1870 and the birth of four of their children.
The young Mark Twain comes across as a man of adventure who gloried in the freedom he found as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi and later as a prospector and journalist in the Old West. At the same time, Twain emerges as a man “fierce in his loves and loyalties”; a man “exemplary in marriage” but “implacable in his hatreds and grudges.” According to Chernow, Twain had wild fantasies about striking it rich with silver mining and even thought of cornering the global coca trade. These fantasies came to nothing. Indeed, at one point, Twain found himself working as a common laborer in a quartz mill, where he had to shovel silver tailings. Yet, the experiences Twain had out West provided the raw material for Roughing It, his fictionalized account of “a rough-and-tumble world where violence often ruled…and murder was commonplace.” Later experiences on a trip to the Holy Land provided Twin with grist for The Innocents Abroad, which Chernow notes, delighted “legions of readers even as it infuriated religious folk of a more tender sensibility.”
Chernow finds evidence of Twain’s writing prowess first appearing in his letters home; letters which his mother Jane had printed in the Keokuk (Iowa) Gate City. Later, he sent satirical sketches to The Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, which prompted the newspaper’s owner to offer him a job as a local editor. Among his early works were wild made-up stories about “a petrified man” supposedly found buried in limestone and a “bloody massacre” near Carson City. In early February 1863, Samuel Clemens published his first article under the byline “Mark Twain,” a name possibly derived from the words shouted by a Mississippi leadsman, meaning two fathoms.
Perhaps no early story by Twain had more significance than “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” Published first in The New York Saturday Press and later in the Californian, the story focused on a frog that always won jumping contests until the owner of a rival frog loaded it with shot. The story won praise from coast to coast and established Twain as a distinct pioneering voice in American letters.
Chernow neatly blends his analysis of Twain’s writing with insights into his personal relationships. Many of these relationships, like the one with his brother Orion, had both positive and negative sides. Others started off positive but ended up negative. That was the case with fellow humorist Bret Harte, who Twain much respected until a rocky collaboration on a play called Ah Sin put them at odds.
The one person with whom Twain had a uniquely powerful and positive relationship was his wife, Olivia “Livy” Langdon. His marriage to her and the family life they built together in Hartford, Connecticut provide much of the content for the second part of Chernow’s book, which he labels “Floodtide.” The author notes that Twain and his wife resided in a neighborhood called Nook Farm, which included esteemed writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, and prominent political figures such as former Connecticut governor Joseph Hawley. One Nook Farm resident, Joseph Twichell, minister of local Congregational Church, became a lifelong friend and confidante. This friendship was unusual inasmuch as Twain adhered to “heterodox beliefs” that made him critical — even scornful — of the Old Testament God.
Aside from Twain’s family life, Chernow examines the creative process Twain followed in creating some of his most celebrated books. A letter from an Old Hannibal friend, Will Bowen, opened “floodgates” of memories that, in Twain’s words, “…stirred me to the bottom. The fountains of my great deep are broken up and I have rained reminiscences for four and twenty hours.” The result was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, completed in 1875. Another well-known work, The Prince and the Pauper, was inspired by a novel by Charlotte M. Yonge in which an aristocrat disguised himself as a blind beggar. Twain “doubled the fun” by having poor-boy Tom Canty take on royal trappings by trading places with young Edward Tudor, later to become King Edward VI.
Toward the end of “Floodtide,” Chernow covers developments in Twain’s life that receive further attention in the author’s later years. Those developments include his complicated relationships with his daughters, his suspicion of and conflicts with publishers, and his ill-advised investments, especially in a “monstrous machine” called the Paige typesetter.
I’ll say more about Chernow’s writing style in Part II of this review, but suffice it to say, his flowing, well-structured prose makes Mark Twain a reasonably easy book to read. Part II will be posted sometime toward the middle of September.