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Search - The Innocents Abroad Or The New Pilgrims Progress - Volume I

The Innocents Abroad Or The New Pilgrims Progress - Volume I
Author: Mark Twain

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD OR The New Pilgrims Progress BEING SOME ACCOUNT OF THE STEAMSHIP QUAKER CITYS PLEASURE EXCURSION TO EUROPE AND THE HOLY LAND BY MARK TWAIN Samuel I. Clemens IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I . BIOGRAPHICAL CRITICISM BY BRANDER MATTHEWS Prv etsor qf Literature m Columbia University IT is a common delusion of those who discuss con tempora... more »ry literature that there is such an entity as the reading public, possessed of a certain uni formity of taste. There is not one public there are many publics, as many in fact as there are different kinds of taste and the extent of an authors popu larity is in proportion to the number of thes separate publics he may chance to please. Scott, for ex ample, appealed not only to those who relished romance and enjoyed excitement, but also to those who appreciated his honest portrayal of sturdy char acters, Thackeray is preferred by ambitious youth who are insidiously flattered by his tacit compliments to their knowledge of the world, by the disenchanted who cannot help seeing the petty meannesses of soci ety, and by the less sophisticated in whom sentiment vi Biographical Criticism has not gone to seed in sentimentality. Dickens In his own day bid for the approval of those who liked broad caricature and were therefore pleased with Stiggins and Chadband, of those who fed greedily on plentiful pathos and were therefore delighted with the deathbeds of Smike and Paul Dombey and Little Nell and also of those who asked for unex pected adventure and were therefore glad to dis entangle the melodramatic intrigues of Ralph Nickleby. In like manner the American author who has chosen to call himself Mark Twain has attained to an immense popularity because the qualities he pos sesses in a high degree appeal to so many and so widely varied publics, first of all, no doubt, to the public that revels in hearty and robust fun, but also to the public which is glad to be swept along by the full current of adventure, which is sincerely touched by manly pathos, which is satisfied by vigorous and exact portrayal of character, and which respects shrewdness and wisdom and sanity and a healthy hatred of pretense and affectation and sham. Per haps no one book of Mark Twains with the pos sible exception of Huckleberry Finn is equally a favorite with all his readers and perhaps some of bis best characteristics are absent from his earlier Biographical Criticism vii books or but doubtfully latent in them. Mark Twain is many-sided and he has ripened in knowl edge and in power since he first attracted attention as a wild Western funny man. As he has grown older he has reflected more he has both broadened and deepened. The writer of comic copy for a mining-camp newspaper has developed into a liberal humorist, handling life seriously and making his readers think as he makes them laugh, until to-day Mark Twain has perhaps the largest audience of any author now using the English language,, To trace the stages of this evolution and to count the steps whereby the sage-brush reporter has risen to the rank of a writer of world-wide celebrity, is as interesting as it is instructive. I. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born November 30, 1835, at Florida, Missouri. His father was a merchant who had come from Tennessee and who removed soon after his sons birth to Hannibal, a little town on the Mississippi. What Hannibal was like and what were the circumstances of Mr. Clem ens s boyhood we can see for ourselves in the con vincing pages of Tom Sawyer. Mr...

ISBN-13: 9781406714890
ISBN-10: 1406714895
Publication Date: 3/15/2007
Pages: 388
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Harding Press
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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