[1] While from time to time attending church and occasionally making references to God, Twain at one point was unambiguous regarding his atheism: "There is nothing. There is no God and no universe, there is only empty space, and in it a lost and homeless and wandering and companionless and indestructible Thought. And I am that thought. And God, and the Universe, and Time, and Life, and Death, and Joy and Sorrow and Pain only a grotesque and brutal dream, evolved from the frantic imagination of that same Thought." Letter to Joseph Twichell, reprinted in Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger Manuscripts (1969), edited by William Gibson.
Father: John Marshall Clemens (storekeeper, b. 11-Aug-1798, d. 24-Mar-1847 pneumonia)
Mother: Jane Lampton (b. 18-Jun-1803, d. 27-Oct-1890)
Wife: Olivia Langdon (m. 2-Feb-1870, d. 5-Jun-1904, one son, three daughters)
Son: Langdon (b. 1870, d. 1872)
Daughter: Jean (b. 1880, d. 1909)
Daughter: Susy (b. 1872, d. 1896 meningitis)
Daughter: Clara Clemens (b. 8-Jun-1874, d. 19-Nov-1962)
American Anti-Imperialist League VP (1901-10)
E Clampus Vitus
Freemasonry Polar Star Lodge No. 79
Phi Beta Kappa Society
Bankruptcy 1894
Coma 21-Apr-1910
Risk Factors: Depression, Smoking, Color Blindness
Rotten Library Page:
Mark Twain
Author of books:
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1867, short stories)
The Innocents Abroad (1869, novel)
Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance (1871, fiction)
Roughing It (1872, novel)
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873, novel)
Mark Twain's Sketches: New and Old (1875, short stories)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876, novel)
Punch, Brothers Punch! And Other Sketches (1878, short stories)
The Prince and the Pauper: A Tale for Young People of All Ages (1882, novel)
The Stolen White Elephant (1882, novel)
Life on the Mississippi (1883, novel)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885, novel)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889, novel)
The American Claimant (1892, novel)
Merry Tales (1892, short stories)
The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other Stories (1893, short stories)
Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894, novel)
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins (1894, novel)
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte (1896, novel)
Tom Sawyer Abroad, Tom Sawyer Detective, and Other Stories (1896, collection)
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World (1897, travelogue)
How To Tell a Story and Other Essays (1897, essays)
The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900, collection)
A Double Barrelled Detective Story (1902, novella)
My Debut as a Literary Person and Other Essays (1903, essays)
Extracts from Adam's Diary (1904, fiction)
King Leopold's Soliloquy (1905, pamphlet)
What Is Man? (1906, philosophy)
The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906, short stories)
Eve's Diary (1906, fiction)
Christian Science (1907, religion)
A Horse's Tale (1907, fiction)
Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909, criticism)
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (1909, fiction)
Mark Twain's Speeches (1910, speeches)
The Mysterious Stranger (1916, novella)
Mark Twain's Letters (1917, letters)
The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches (1919, short stories)
Europe and Elsewhere (1923, essays)
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924, memoir)
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935, collection)
The Washoe Giant in San Francisco: Being Heretofore Uncollected Sketches by Mark Twain (1938, short stories)
Mark Twain's Travels with Mr. Brown: Being Heretofore Uncollected Sketches (1940, short stories)
Mark Twain In Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940, collection)
AKA Samuel Langhorne Clemens