Mark Twain's America

DeVoto calls his work an essay in the correction of ideas. After the official biography of Mark Twain had been written by Albert Paine, DeVoto believed there was still more to be said about the works of the great American writer and humorist. He dedicates himself here to a study of the works of Twain, not the man or his life, but to how and why these works arose from American life.

Literature & Fiction

Bernard DeVoto

History & Criticism

Greenwood Press

Discusses the settling of the West in the U.S. during 1846 to 1846 through various parties and persons.

Year of Decision 1846

History

Americas

Houghton, Mifflin Co.

This selection captures the friendship between the leaders, the trials that required acts of heroism, and reveals the human dimension of the group.

The Journals of Lewis and Clark

Travel

Beginning in 1835, the birth year of Samuel Clemens, and extending through the Gilded Age, Mark Twain’s America depicts the vigorous social and historical forces that produced the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Bernard DeVoto catches a people moving west: Twain’s own family drifting down the Ohio, emigrants of every stripe, the famous and the obscure. Answering genteel critics such as Van Wyck Brooks, who blamed the American frontier for stifling Twain’s genius, DeVoto shows that, in fact, Twain’s early days in Nevada and California made a writer of him. Mark Twain’s America, first published in 1932, enriched by western humor and supernatural slave lore, is an enduring work of American literary and cultural criticism.

Bison Books

Across the Wide Missouri

Houghton, Mifflin Company

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Books by Bernard DeVoto