The Life of Mark Twain: The Early Years

In the first volume of a projected three-volume biography, Twain scholar Scharnhorst (Mark Twain on Potholes and Politics) offers a meticulously detailed and exhaustively researched chronicle of the famous author’s life from his birth in 1835 through his move to Buffalo, New York, in 1870. Drawing on over 5,000 unpublished letters and other previously unseen archival material, Scharnhorst dutifully traces Twain’s ancestry—he “was descended from a long line of lower-cas(t)e protestants, dissenters, and rapscallions”—and childhood with a “stern” and “austere” father. Weaving Twain’s writings through the events of his life, Scharnhorst skillfully reveals the young Twain’s exposure to violence and illness in the frontier villages in which he grew up, his early desire to be a minister, days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, and early anonymous and pseudonymous writings. As Twain moves west from Hannibal, Mo., to San Francisco, he begins to bolster his reputation as a writer, finally breaking through to national prominence with the story “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog.” Although the book’s attention to detail can be overwhelming and even tiresome, Scharnhorst’s thorough and careful research results in a scholarly biography that will undoubtedly be considered definitive. Photos. (Apr.)