Roughing It is a book of semi-autobiographical travel literature by Mark Twain. It was written in 1870–71 and published in 1872,[2][3] following his first travel book The Innocents Abroad (1869). Roughing It is dedicated to Twain's mining companion Calvin H. Higbie, later a civil engineer who died in 1914.[4]
The book follows the travels of young Mark Twain through the American West during the years 1861–1867. He joined his brother Orion Clemens, who had been appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory, on a stagecoach journey west. Twain consulted his brother's diary to refresh his memory and borrowed heavily from his imagination for many stories in the book.
U.S. astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell read Roughing It aloud to pass the time aboard NASA's Gemini VII, a 14-day-long Earth orbital mission in December 1965.[5]
In Lords of St. Thomas, a 2018 historical novel set in St. Thomas, Nevada, the main character "Little" Henry Lord is reading Roughing It when he learns that his father has fallen from the Hoover Dam.
Adaptations
Various sections of Roughing It were borrowed by television series such as Bonanza.[6] In 1960, an hour-long adaptation was broadcast on NBC starring Andrew Prine and James Daly.[6]
A four-hour 2002 mini-series adaptation was broadcast on Hallmark Channel. Directed by Charles Martin Smith, it starred James Garner as an elderly Samuel Clemens and Robin Dunne as a young Clemens.[6]
Roughing It recounts midway through the book that a rich "blind lead" gold strike was discovered and claimed by a partnership of Twain, Calvin Higbie, and a mine foreman A.D. Allen, giving them well-founded hopes of being millionaires. To establish a claim, it was required that any or all of the claimants do a reasonable amount of work on the claimed strike within ten days. Due to chance happenings and failed communications between the three, the work requirement was left unfulfilled, and the forfeited but rich claim was quickly seized by others ten days after it was discovered. In the dedication of the book, Twain refers to Higbie as an "Honest Man, a Genial Comrade, and a Steadfast Friend … dedicated in Memory of the Curious Time When We Two Were Millionaires for Ten Days".[7] The prospecting story is also covered in a 1968 episode of the syndicated televisionanthology seriesDeath Valley Days, hosted by Robert Taylor. In the television dramatization, Tom Skerritt plays Twain, and Dabney Coleman was cast as Higbie.[8]
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a picaresque novel by American author Mark Twain that was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." Twain's novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
The Prince and the Pauper is a novel by American author Mark Twain. It was first published in 1881 in Canada, before its 1882 publication in the United States. The novel represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction. The plot concerns the ascension of nine-year-old Edward VI of England in 1547 and his interactions with look-alike Tom Canty, a London pauper who lives with his abusive, alcoholic father.
Virginia City is a census-designated place (CDP) that is the county seat of Storey County, Nevada, and the largest community in the county. The city is a part of the Reno–Sparks Metropolitan Statistical Area.
William Wright (1829–1898), better known by the pen name Dan DeQuille or Dan De Quille, was an American author, journalist, and humorist. He was best known for his written accounts of the people, events, and silver mining operations on the Comstock Lode at Virginia City, Nevada, including his non-fiction book History of the Big Bonanza.
The Adventures of Mark Twain is a 1944 American biographical film directed by Irving Rapper and starring Fredric March as Samuel Clemens and Alexis Smith as Twain's wife Olivia. Produced by Warner Bros., the film was nominated for three Academy Awards, including that for Best Music for Max Steiner's score. Irving Rapper was hesitant to direct the film but was persuaded by Hal B. Wallis.
California Cavern is a Limestone cave in the Sierra Nevada foothills, in Cave City, Calaveras County, California.
Unionville is a census-designated place in Pershing County, Nevada, located south of I-80 and just west of State Route 400 on Unionville Road, with the population as of the 2020 census being 27. The town's best years were during the 1870s, when it was an active mining and prospecting town serving the surrounding hilly region. For a brief time, Samuel Langhorne Clemens lived there and prospected, but left without having had much success. Currently, the hamlet consists of a single business – a tourist inn – and a few small houses clustered along or near the gravel roadway which permits vehicular ingress and egress. The nearest paved road, an extension of this gravel road, is about 7 miles to the east. The nearest services of any sort, other than those available at the inn, are approximately one hour's drive away.
Olivia Langdon Clemens was the wife of the American author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known under his pen name Mark Twain.
Mark Twain's legacy includes awards, events, a variety of memorials and namesakes, and numerous works of art, entertainment, and media.
Mark Twain: The Musical is a stage musical biography of Mark Twain that had a ten-year summertime run in Elmira, NY and Hartford, CT (1987–1995) and was telecast on a number of public television stations. An original cast CD was released by Premier Recordings in 1988, and LML Music in 2009 issued a newly mastered and complete version of the score. Video and DVD versions of the show are currently in release.
Orion Clemens was the first and only Secretary of the Nevada Territory. His younger brother Samuel Langhorne Clemens became a famous author under the pen name Mark Twain.
Red Dog was a California gold rush mining town located in the Gold Country in south-central Nevada County, California, United States, 6 mi (9.7 km) northeast of Chicago Park. Red Dog Hill, a mine and campsite, was founded by three men all under the age of 22, and was named by their youngest, a 15-year-old prospector. As mining operations grew, the campsite became a settlement, and then a town with a population of 2,000 residents, before it was eventually abandoned. Still considered important today, Red Dog Townsite is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Mount Davidson is both the highest and most topographically prominent mountain in both Storey County, Nevada, and the Virginia Range. The mountain forms a backdrop for the mining boomtown of Virginia City which was built above the Comstock Lode silver strike.
Lemuel Sanford Bowers was an American teamster of Irish descent, miner and owner of the Crown Point Mine near Gold Hill, Nevada. Bowers and his wife were the Nevada Territory's first millionaires. Their home, the Bowers Mansion, was the first of the stately homes built in Nevada with the wealth from the Comstock Lode.
Joseph Thompson Goodman was an American journalist, writer, and epigrapher. During the Comstock silver boom in Virginia City, Nevada, he was owner and editor of the Territorial Enterprise, one of the largest and most influential newspapers on the West Coast. He hired Samuel Clemens as a reporter for the paper, giving Clemens his "start" as a professional writer. He later became interested in deciphering Maya inscriptions and made significant contributions in the field.
Mark Twain Cave — originally McDowell's Cave — is a show cave located near Hannibal, Missouri. It was named for author Mark Twain whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Clemens lived in Hannibal from 1839 to 1853, age 4 to 17. It is the oldest operating show cave in the state, giving tours continuously since 1886. Along with nearby Cameron Cave, it became a registered National Natural Landmark in 1972, with a citation reading "Exceptionally good examples of the maze type of cavern development." The cave — as "McDougal's Cave" — plays an important role in the novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) by Mark Twain and was renamed in honor of the author in 1880.
The use of the pen name of Mark Twain first occurred in Samuel Clemens's writing while in the Nevada Territory which he had journeyed to with his brother. Clemens/Twain lived in Nevada from 1861 to 1864, and visited the area twice after leaving. Historians such as Peter Messent see Clemens's time in Nevada as "the third major formative period of Mark Twain's career" due to his encounters with "writers and humorists who would both shape and put the finishing touches on his literary art." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain states that despite the few "disagreeable experiences" he had there, Twain "thrived in Nevada." Among those things he learned was "how far he could push a joke", a lesson learned from some "disagreeable experiences" he brought upon himself.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a novel by Mark Twain published on 9 June 1876 about a boy, Tom Sawyer, growing up along the Mississippi River. It is set in the 1840s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain lived as a boy. In the novel, Sawyer has several adventures, often with his friend Huckleberry Finn. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime. Though overshadowed by its 1885 sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the book is considered by many to be a masterpiece of American literature. It is alleged by Mark Twain to be one of the first novels to be written on a typewriter.
From 1862 to 1865, Samuel Clemens wrote for Virginia City, Nevada's leading newspaper, Territorial Enterprise. There, his literary skills were first realized and he first used the pen name "Mark Twain".
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