Mark Twain, The American Claimant

Max Lester Loges (Lamar University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1892

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The American Claimant was written during a period in Samuel Clemens’ life when he was desperately in need of money but extremely short on ideas. Like many other writers or film studios in similar situations, he imagined that a successful sequel would be the solution to his dilemma. Colonel Sellers, one of the protagonists in The American Claimant, had been one of the more memorable characters in his first novel, The Gilded Age (1873). Since then he had used Sellers as a character in two unsuccessful plays, Colonel Sellers (1874) and Colonel Sellers as a Scientist (1883), the second of which he had co-authored with William Dean Howells.

Like The Gilded Age, central conflict in The …

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1252 words

Citation: Loges, Max Lester. "The American Claimant". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 December 2014 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1584, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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