VII.

Other Writings and Later Life

Among the books Twain worked on, while Huckleberry Finn was set aside, were A Tramp Abroad (1880), which describes a walking trip through the Black Forest of Germany and the Swiss Alps, and The Prince and the Pauper (1882), a children’s book that focuses on switched identities in Tudor England. Life on the Mississippi (1883) combines an autobiographical account of his experiences as a river pilot with a visit to the Mississippi nearly two decades after he left it. The first part of the book, about his early experiences, was originally serialized in the Atlantic Monthly in 1875 as Old Times on the Mississippi. In the second part of the book, Twain records the changes he finds upon his return: Railroad competition has endangered the river trade and the riverboat pilot is no longer a respected figure. Twain regrets the passing of a great era and protests that the train is no substitute for the elegant riverboat.

In 1884 Twain formed the firm Charles L. Webster and Company to publish his and other writers’ works. At first it was a profitable venture. The first publications were Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Personal Memoirs (two volumes, 1885-1886), by American general and president Ulysses S. Grant. A disastrous investment in an automatic typesetting machine led to the firm’s bankruptcy in 1894. To economize, Twain and his family went to Europe in 1891 and for the next decade had no permanent home. After the firm failed, Twain announced that he would pay all debts in full, and in 1895 began a successful worldwide lecture tour. The tour and the book based on it, Following the Equator (1897), paid off Twain's debts. But while Twain was touring, his daughter Suzy died of meningitis.

Twain’s work during the 1890s and the 1900s is marked by growing pessimism and bitterness—the result of his business reverses and the death of his wife, Olivia, in 1904 and his daughter Jean in 1909. Twain died less than four months after Jean, on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut.

Signs of Twain’s bitterness appear in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). Intended as a satire on the cruelty and credulity of people in feudal England (see Feudalism), the tale veers from farce to tragedy and back again. Other significant later works are Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), a novel set in the South before the Civil War that criticizes racism by focusing on mistaken racial identities, and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896), a sentimental biography. Twain’s other later writings include short stories, the best known of which are “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg” (1899) and “The War Prayer” (1905); philosophical, social, and political essays; the manuscript of “The Mysterious Stranger,” an uncompleted piece that was published posthumously in 1916; and autobiographical dictations. His last, most scathing attack against “the damned human race,” Letters from the Earth, was kept from publication by his daughter Clara until 1962.