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Chapter 16 - Business and Economics

from Part III - Historical and Cultural Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2019

By
Lawrence Howe
Edited by
John Bird
John Bird
Affiliation:
Winthrop University
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Summary

In addition to being a writer, Mark Twain was a businessman, although almost always a failure. He was an inventor who tried to market his ideas, with mixed results. He founded his own publishing company when he grew tired of dealing with publishers, and for a time he was successful, although that too ended in bankruptcy. Like others in the Gilded Age, which he named, he was an investor, again with mixed and finally disastrous results. Although he criticized his age as one of monetary grasping, he himself was fully inculcated in his age. He lived in an age of great economic change, and his works reflect a tortured relationship with money and economics.

Keywords

Mark TwainSamuel Clemensbusinesseconomicsinvestmentsbankruptcy
Type
Chapter
Information
Mark Twain in Context , pp. 161 - 170
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

Works Cited

Clemens, Samuel L. “Contents of Safe Deposit Box, June 5, 1891.” Mark Twain Papers. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Clemens, Samuel L.Letter to Orion Clemens. November 21, 1860. Mark Twain Project. www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docId=letters/UCCL00026.xml;query=egg;searchAll=;sectionType1=;sectionType2=;sectionType3=;sectionType4=;sectionType5=;style=letter;brand=mtp#1.Google Scholar
Clemens, Samuel L.Letter to Pamela A. Moffett and Jane Lampton Clemens. October 25, 1861. Mark Twain Project. www.marktwainproject.org/xtf/view?docid=letters/uccl00030.xml;query=;searchall=;sectiontype1=;sectiontype2=;sectiontype3=;sectiontype4=;sectiontype5=;style=letter;brand=mtp#1.Google Scholar
Clemens, Samuel L.“Miscellaneous Documents, 1898.” Mark Twain Papers. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Clemens, Samuel L.Patent Number 121,992 – Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments. US121992 A. Hartford, CT, issued December 19, 1871. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US121992.pdf.Google Scholar
Clemens, Samuel L.Patent Number 140,245 – Improvement in Scrap-Books. US140245 A. Hartford, CT, issued June 24, 1873. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US140245.pdf.Google Scholar
Clemens, Samuel L.Patent Number 324,535 – Game Apparatus. US324535 A. Hartford, CT, issued August 18, 1885. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US324535.pdf.Google Scholar
Csicsila, Joseph. “‘These Hideous Times’: Mark Twain’s Bankruptcy and the Panic of 1893.” Wonham and Howe 127–40.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “The Last Tycoon” and “The Great Gatsby.” New York: Scribners, 1951.Google Scholar
Gribben, Alan. “Mark Twain, Businessman: The Margins of Profit.” Studies in American Humor 1.1 (1982): 24–43.Google Scholar
Howe, Lawrence. “Narrating the Tennessee Land: Real Property, Fictional Land, and Mark Twain’s Literary Enterprise.” Wonham and Howe 16–38.Google Scholar
Lee, Judith Yaross. “Brand Management: Samuel Clemens, Trademarks, and the Mark Twain Enterprise.” Wonham and Howe 39–69.Google Scholar
“Mark Twain No Financier.” New York Sun, July 13, 1895: 7. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1895–07-13/ed-1/seq-7/.Google Scholar
Michelson, Bruce. Printer’s Devil: Mark Twain and the American Publishing Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wonham, Henry B., and Howe, Lawrence, eds. Mark Twain and Money: Language, Capital, and Culture. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2017.Google Scholar

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