From his boyhood days in the little Mississippi River town of Hannibal, Missouri, Samuel Clemens had a vague feeling that he was somehow marked for greater things than the rest of his fellow townsmen.

As itinerant printer, river pilot, government secretary, miner, newpaperman, world traveler, and public lecturer, gradually he found himself as an incomparable writer of the American scene — Mark Twain, creator of deathless characters in immortal stories.

But behind the shining public figure, in the inner recesses of his tormented soul, lurked another Mark Twain, nagged by the sense of a dual personality.

In a lively and sensitive biography, Monroe Stearns vividly presents both Mark Twains — the everyday human being with all his strengths and weaknesses, and the doubting genius, from whose inner conflicts great works of literature were created.

A solid and unforgettable portrait of one of the greatest of American writers.

From the book