In the footsteps of Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Noah Webster Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• Pick a City/Town
• A Photo Tour of the Mark Twain House in Connecticut
• The museum is currently open 7 days a week from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM. Final tours begin at 3:15 pm et!
• Patterned Brick - Mark Twain House
• Earth Day: How a senator’s idea more than 50 years ago got people fighting for their planet
• Graveyard Shift Ghost Tours
• Why do we celebrate Earth Day?
• Twain’s Hartford Home: a National Historic Landmark

At the age of 30, he had already been first a riverboat pilot and then a miner himself, and having failed at the latter profession he had decided to try his hand at journalism. "Much of the last decade of his life, he lived in hell," wrote Hamlin Hill. He wrote a fair amount but was unable to finish most of his projects. Twain's last 15 years were filled with public honors, including degrees from Oxford and Yale.

Pick a City/Town

Ironically‚ a year after its publication‚ the Clemenses’ elaborate 25-room house on Farmington Avenue‚ which had cost the then-huge sum of $40‚000-$45‚000‚ was completed. After failing as a silver prospector‚ Sam began writing for the Territorial Enterprise‚ a Virginia City‚ Nevada newspaper where he used‚ for the first time‚ his pen name‚ Mark Twain. Seeking change, by 1864 Sam headed for San Francisco where he continued to write for local papers.

A Photo Tour of the Mark Twain House in Connecticut

Note how architect Edward Tuckerman Potter uses a variety of architectural detail to make the Mark Twain House visually interesting. The house, built in 1874, is constructed with a variety of brick patterns as well as brick color patterns. Adding these decorative brackets in the cornice creates as much excitement as a plot twist in a Mark Twain novel. No doubt, Samuel Clemens had seen or heard of the Nott Memorial at Union College, a similarly rounded structure designed by his architect, Edward Tuckerman Potter. At the Mark Twain house, the conservatory is off the library, just as the Nott Memorial used to house the college library. Decorative corner brackets are characteristic of Victorian house styles, including Folk Victorian and Stick.

The museum is currently open 7 days a week from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM. Final tours begin at 3:15 pm et!

If you take a tour, you can see where he sat to write them and the windows from which he gazed. Clemens hired New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design the family residence. Both Samuel and Olivia Clemens were intimately involved in the design process.

Clemens took notes, wrote the story down in his own style and published it as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” under the name Mark Twain, thus beginning in earnest his career as a writer. In 1960, Fred did as his parents had, and moved his family into another house nearby. In 1962 the Hamilton family donated the house to the town of West Hartford; it was restored and opened as a museum in the mid-1960s. It is now run by the Noah Webster Foundation and the West Hartford Historical Society. They were very gracious when I visited and told them I was related to the people who’d donated the house.

In those years, the country's cultural life was dictated by an Eastern establishment centered in New York City and Boston — a straight-laced, Victorian, moneyed group that cowed Twain. He honed a distinctive narrative style — friendly, funny, irreverent, often satirical and always eager to deflate the pretentious. Twain knew his way around a newspaper office, so that September, he went to work as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. He churned out news stories, editorials and sketches, and along the way adopted the pen name Mark Twain — steamboat slang for 12 feet of water. Twain loved his career — it was exciting, well-paying and high-status, roughly akin to flying a jetliner today.

You can learn a lot about people by the way they treat their animals and employees. One look at the  Carriage House near the Mark Twain House tells you how caring the Clemens family was. The building is very large for an 1874 barn and coachman's apartment. Architects Edward Tuckerman Potter and Alfred H. Thorp designed the outbuilding with styling similar to the main residence. Slate roofing was common during the time the Mark Twain House was being built in the 1870s. For architect Edward Tuckerman Potter, multi-colored hexagonal slate afforded another opportunity to texturize and colorize the house he was designing for Samuel Clemens.

The leaf motif, bringing "nature" into the architectural detailing, is typical of the Arts and Crafts movement, led by English-born William Morris. The library at the Mark Twain house is typical of Victorian colors and interior design of the day. Taking the pen name Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens wrote his most famous novels in this house, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

His next major work, in 1894, was The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, a somber novel that some observers described as "bitter." In 1883 he put out Life on the Mississippi, an interesting but safe travel book. When Huck Finn finally was published in 1884, Livy gave it a chilly reception.

Ghost Tours at Mark Twain House in Hartford; Will Lady in White Appear? - CT Insider

Ghost Tours at Mark Twain House in Hartford; Will Lady in White Appear?.

Posted: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 07:00:00 GMT [source]

He traveled to California to obtain the release of some of his letters published in newspapers there. In 1903‚ after living in New York City for three years‚ Livy became ill, and Sam and his wife returned to Italy, where she died a year later. After her death‚ Sam lived in New York until 1908, when he moved into his last house‚ “Stormfield,” in Redding‚ Connecticut.

The Boer War in South Africa and the Boxer Rebellion in China fueled his growing anger toward imperialistic countries and their actions. With the Spanish-American and Philippine wars in 1898‚ Sam’s wrath was redirected toward the American government. When he returned to the United States in 1900‚ his finances restored‚ Sam readily declared himself an anti-imperialist and‚ from 1901 until his death‚ served as the vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League. Huckleberry Finn was also the first book published by Sam’s own publishing company‚ The Charles L. Webster Company. In an attempt to gain control over publication as well as to make substantial profits‚ Sam created the company in 1884. A year later he contracted with Ulysses S. Grant to publish Grant’s memoirs; the two-volume set provided large royalties for Grant’s widow and was a financial success for the publisher as well.

A library membership pass is available, in partnership with local libraries, to offer patrons discounted admission to the museum. Purchasing a library membership provides your patrons with access to Mark Twain’s historic home, as well as our Webster Bank Museum Center, featuring two exhibitions and a short film about Twain’s life by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns. He also wrote short stories, essays and several other books, including a study of Joan of Arc. Some of these later works have enduring merit, and his unfinished work The Chronicle of Young Satan has fervent admirers today.