In ""Hatching Ruin,"" Charles H. Gold provides a complete
description of Samuel L. Clemens's business relationships with
Charles L. Webster and James W. Paige during the 1880s. Gold
analyzes how these relationships affected Clemens as a person and
an artist, most notably in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court. "
The 1880s were a time when Samuel Clemens was more businessman
than author. Clemens wanted to be rich. From an early age, he had
dreamed of wealth. Suspicious of his previous publisher, Clemens
started a publishing company and placed Charles L. Webster, who was
married to his niece, at the head of it. He also invested large
sums of money with James Paige, who was developing a typesetting
machine. These were to be Clemens's instruments of success--his way
to bring technology to the world and become so rich that he would
never need to earn money again.
Unfortunately for him, Paige was a perfectionist and a
compulsive tinkerer who never stopped working on the typesetting
machine. When, after early success, the publishing company began to
fail, Clemens was unable to continue his investments in the
typesetter. He blamed both Webster and Paige for his failure to
"get rich quick" and for his eventual bankruptcy in 1894. Gold
argues that these financial changes in his life helped to shape
"Connecticut Yankee, "an important novel and cultural
statement.
At the beginning of the 1880s, while life was still good,
Clemens wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, " in part a
nostalgic look at youth and innocence in preindustrial America. "A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, "written after the
author's financial failures, is a savage condemnation of the Gilded
Age, especially technology's role in it. Gold's ""Hatching Ruin""
tells for the first time the full story of Clemens's experiences as
an investor, employer, and entrepreneur during the Gilded Age.
Gold uses previously unpublished material from family
correspondence and Clemens's autobiographical dictations to present
a far more complex picture of the man most people know only as Mark
Twain. He also offers a fuller depiction of Charles Webster and his
relationship with Clemens than was previously available, while
answering many questions that have hung over that relationship.
This book will have a wide appeal to both Twain students and
scholars, as well as anyone interested in social history.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!