Mark Twain : American humorist /
Tracy Wuster.
- Columbia : University of Missouri Press, (c)2016.
- 1 online resource (xvi, 483 pages) : illustrations, portraits.
- Mark Twain and his circle .
Includes bibliographies and index.
Setting the scene : Mark Twain, the American humorist -- "Of a low order -- i.e. humorous" : American humor and the meanings of Mark Twain -- An American birth abroad : The innocents abroad and American humor -- "The company of the best" : phunny phellow in the Atlantic monthly -- A worried mother : Mark Twain and the circulation of the humorist -- Transatlantic Twain : the lion in London and other "great American humorists" -- "There's millions in it!" : Mark Twain and the business of satire in the Gilded Age -- The stripèd humorist : Mark Twain makes waves in the Atlantic's Ocean -- "The most popular humorist who ever lived" : the transformations of Mark Twain.
"Mark Twain, American Humorist examines the ways that Mark Twain's reputation developed at home and abroad in the period between 1865 and 1882, years in which he went from a regional humorist to national and international fame. In the late 1860s, Mark Twain became the exemplar of a school of humor that was thought to be uniquely American. As he moved into more respectable venues in the 1870s, especially through the promotion of William Dean Howells in the Atlantic Monthly, Mark Twain muddied the hierarchical distinctions between class-appropriate leisure and burgeoning forms of mass entertainment, between uplifting humor and debased laughter, and between the literature of high culture and the passing whim of the merely popular"--Publisher's website.
9780826274113
Twain, Mark, 1835-1910 --Humor.
American wit and humor--History and criticism. Wit and humor--Social aspects--History--19th century.