Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain

With brilliant immediacy, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain brings to life a towering literary figure whose dual personae symbolized the emerging American conflict between down-to-earth morality and freewheeling ambition. As Mark Twain, he was the Mississippi riverboat pilot, the satirist with a fiery hatred of pretension, and the author of such classics as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. As Mr. Clemens, he was the star who married an heiress, built a palatial estate, threw away fortunes on harebrained financial schemes, and lived the extravagant life that Mark Twain despised. Set against the richly drawn background of the post-Civil War period that Mark Twain dubbed the "Gilded Age," Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain is sure to entertain and enlighten both general readers and scholars alike.