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." His 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." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
The Miracle Worker refers to a broadcast, a play and various other adaptations of Helen Keller's 1903 autobiography The Story of My Life. The first of these works was a 1957 Playhouse 90 broadcast written by William Gibson and starring Teresa Wright as Anne Sullivan and Patricia McCormack as Keller. Gibson adapted his teleplay for a 1959 Broadway production with Patty Duke as Keller and Anne Bancroft as Sullivan. The 1962 film also starred Bancroft and Duke. Subsequent television films were released in 1979 and in 2000.
The Mysterious Stranger is a novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. He worked on it intermittently from 1897 through 1908. Twain wrote multiple versions of the story; each involves a supernatural character called "Satan" or "No. 44".
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain. It was his first great success as a writer and brought him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley. The narrator describes him: "If he even seen a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to wherever he going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road."
The Private History of a Campaign that Failed is one of Mark Twain's sketches (1885), a short, highly fictionalized memoir of his two-week stint in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard. It takes place in Marion County, Missouri, and is about a group of inexperienced militiamen, the Marion Rangers, who end up killing a stranger in panic.
Gemmi Pass is a high mountain pass across the Bernese Alps connecting Leukerbad in the canton of Valais with Kandersteg in the canton of Bern. The pass itself lies within the canton of Valais, at a height of 2,269 metres (7,444 ft) above sea level. The main trail reaches 2,322 metres (7,618 ft).
"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" is a piece of short fiction by Mark Twain. It first appeared in Harper's Monthly in December 1899, and was subsequently published by Harper & Brothers in the collection The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900). Some see this story "as a replay of the Garden of Eden story", and associate the corrupter of the town with Satan.
The Bostonians is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Century Magazine in 1885–1886 and then as a book in 1886. This bittersweet tragicomedy centres on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chancellor, Ransom's cousin and a Boston feminist; and Verena Tarrant, a pretty, young protégée of Olive's in the feminist movement. The storyline concerns the struggle between Ransom and Olive for Verena's allegiance and affection, though the novel also includes a wide panorama of political activists, newspaper people, and quirky eccentrics.
Melvin Mouron Belli was a United States lawyer and writer known as "The King of Torts" and by insurance companies as "Melvin Bellicose". He had many celebrity clients, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Errol Flynn, Chuck Berry, Muhammad Ali, The Rolling Stones, Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker, Martha Mitchell, Maureen Connolly, Lana Turner, Tony Curtis, and Mae West. During his legal career, he won over $600 million in damages for his clients. He was also the attorney for Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Albert Bigelow Paine was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain. Paine was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Committee and wrote in several genres, including fiction, humor, and verse.
"To the Person Sitting in Darkness" is an essay by American author Mark Twain published in the North American Review in February 1901. It is a satire exposing imperialism as revealed in the Boxer Uprising and its aftermath, the Boer War, and the Philippine–American War, expressing Twain's anti-imperialist views. It mentions the historical figures Emilio Aguinaldo, William McKinley, Joseph Chamberlain, William Scott Ament and others, and fueled the Twain–Ament indemnities controversy.
The Adventures of Mark Twain, also known as Comet Quest in the United Kingdom, is a 1985 American independent stop-motion claymation fantasy film directed by Will Vinton and starring James Whitmore. It received a limited theatrical release in May 1985 and was released on DVD in January 2006 and again as a collector's edition in 2012 on DVD and Blu-ray.
Markos Kounalakis is an American syndicated journalist and scholar who is the second gentleman of California as the husband of lieutenant governor Eleni Kounalakis. Kounalakis writes a syndicated weekly foreign affairs column for The Miami Herald and McClatchy-Tribune News and is a frequent foreign affairs analyst for CBS News and CNN International. Kounalakis' last syndicated weekly column appeared in the Miami Herald on November 6, 2020. His 2018 National Society of Newspaper Columnists award stated that "Kounalakis's world affairs columns not only offer strong prose and strong opinions, they offer an education." In 2019, he won a SPJ Sunshine State Award for his foreign affairs commentary and criticism.
"The United States of Lyncherdom" is an essay by Mark Twain written in 1901. He wrote it in response to the mass lynchings in Pierce City, Missouri, of Will Godley, his grandfather French Godley, and Eugene Carter. The three African Americans were accused in the rape and murder there of Gazelle Wild on August 19, 1901. Twain blamed lynching in the United States on the herd mentality that prevails among Americans. Twain decided that the country was not ready for the essay, and shelved it.
Plasmon biscuits are a biscuit containing plasmon, a proprietary dried milk. The manufacturers claimed that three pounds (1.4 kg) of plasmon equalled 100 imperial pints (57 L) of milk. Plasmon was manufactured by the International Plasmon Company and was added to a number of different products to make Plasmon Oats, Plasmon Cocoa and Plasmon Biscuits. Plasmon biscuits are still manufactured in Italy by the H. J. Heinz Company.
"The Million Pound Bank Note" is a short story by the American author Mark Twain, published in 1893.
"My Platonic Sweetheart" is a short dream narrative written by American writer Mark Twain. It was originally titled "The Lost Sweetheart" and written during July and August 1898. It was published more than two years after Twain's death, in the December 1912 issue of Harper's Magazine. The main character has several dreams throughout his life about the same woman. The narrative depicts five of these dreams, and in each dream the main character and the woman take on different names. The woman's appearance also changes in each dream. However, the characters' ages in the dreams remain the same, he is seventeen and she is fifteen, and the two characters never fail to recognize each other.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called the "Great American Novel," and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He also wrote poetry, short stories, essays, and non-fiction. His big break was "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1867).
Harold David Cronk is an American writer, director and producer best known for his work in Christian films, and for being a founding partner in 10 West Studios and EMC Productions. Cronk won the Best Director award at the Beverly Hills International Film Festival in 2006. He is husband to Amy Cronk.
Truman W. "True" Williams was an American artist known as the most prolific illustrator to Mark Twain's books and novels. He illustrated the first edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and was thus the first to visually portray such characters as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He was also sole illustrator of Twain's Sketches, New and Old and primary illustrator of Roughing It and The Innocents Abroad. Working with a number of publishers he also illustrated works by writers Bill Nye, George W. Peck, Joaquin Miller, and others. He was also a notorious drunk, which slowed his work and made him unreliable.
