The Singular Mark Twain: A Biography - Softcover

Kaplan, Fred

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1400095271 ISBN 13: 9781400095278

Publisher: Anchor, 2005

Synopsis

In this magisterial full-scale biography of America’s greatest storyteller and satirist, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Fred Kaplan refashions our image of Mark Twain and etches a vibrant portrait of a singular personality who created some of the most memorable literary characters of our culture. He coined the phrase “the Gilded Age,” spoke out vigorously against racism and imperialism, and in his multifaceted singularity as writer, businessman, polemicist, investor, inventor, and self-promoter became the most widely extolled and most dominant icon of American literature. As Kaplan writes, “There has been no one like him since.”

About this title

From the Back Cover

PRAISE FOR GORE VIDAL: A BIOGRAPHY

“Kaplan must be commended....a splendid job.”
--San Francisco Chronicle

“Intimate, rewarding....[Fred Kaplan] leads us back, with insight, to the works of this audacious American master.”
--Los Angeles Times

“It is in Kaplan that all the pieces of the puzzle are at last assembled....It is Kaplan who lets us see the seeds and the shoots, the leaves and the flowers—and alas, the weeds.”
--The Nation

PRAISE FOR DICKENS: A BIOGRAPHY
“Kaplan has spent ten years preparing and writing this book; his achievement is as rare, as wonderful, as the Dickens he brings to life. We are all the beneficiaries of this exceptional biography.”
--Los Angeles Times

“Anyone who has not read a life of Dickens is going to prefer Fred Kaplan’s long, solid, and illuminating biography furnished with new facts and theories, to any previous one they might encounter. The novelist who emerges from his study—dynamic, mercurial, self-deluding, with a big heart for the masses and a small one for his ego, makes fascinating reading.”
--Newsday

PRAISE FOR THOMAS CARLYLE: A BIOGRAPHY

“Mr. Kaplan illuminates the Victorian era by bringing us into what we feel is the very presence of one of its idols.”
--The New Yorker

“Fred Kaplan has performed a labor of love and a commendatory service. His Thomas Carlyle, which draws on unpublished letters, gives us our most complete picture of Carlyle in the context of his age...An achievement of much merit and a gift to students of the word.”
--Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Fred Kaplan is Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of the critically acclaimed biographies Gore Vidal, Henry James, Dickens, and Thomas Carlyle, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. He has held Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and was a Fellow of the National Humanities Center. He lives in Boothbay, Maine.

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1400095271
• ISBN 13: 9781400095278
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 768