back to his happy youthful days on the Mississippi, finding in his memories spiritual rejuvenation and inspiration. At the same time he was gloomy about the future. His longing for an idealized past as a haven from an increasingly hostile present is evident in most of his major works of fiction. Critics have tried to explain this division in outlook, and two major theories have risen from this debate. The first, expounded by Van Wyck Brooks in The Ordeal of Mark Twain, sees in Twain a genius beset from childhood with deep guilt complex stifled by America’s crude frontier atmosphere, his writing edited into prettified respectability through the efforts of his wife and his friend William Dean Howells. The influence of Olivia Clemens and Howells has been greatly discounted by Bernard De Voto, whose Mark Twain’s America and Mark Twain at Work demonstrate the positive effects of frontier life on Twain’s development and attribute, his pessimism to the many personal tragedies he suffered during the last years of his life.As De Voto and other critics have said,“Twain can be found on both sides of every issue: immortality, war and the social problems of the South, to name but three. His importance to world literature liesnot in the power of his ideas, but in the universality of his character’s delemmas and his accessibility to readers of all ages.11In Twains later years he wrote less, but he became a celebrity, speaking out often on public issues. He also came to be known for the white linen suit he always wore when making public appearances. Twain received an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1907. When he died he left an uncompleted autobiography, which was eventually edited by his secretary, Albert Bigelow Paine, and published in 1924. In 1990 the first half of a hand written manuscript of Huckleberry Finn was discovered in Hollywood California. After a series of legal battles over ownership ,...
