If Mark Twain had spent more time writing the kind of books that made him rich and famous and less time and money on get-wealthier projects, speculation and inventions, he and American literature might have been much richer for it.
Peter Krass’ new book about Mark Twain, “Ignorance, Confidence, and Filthy Rich Friends,” portrays the seemingly prolific author as one who tried to be “an Edison as well as a Shakespeare” and, as a consequence, devoted excessive time to inventions and speculation.
Twain began “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in 1876 with the intention of completing it in two months. But he didn’t publish the book until 1885, because he was too preoccupied with refining and marketing a historical game he had invented called “Mark Twain’s Fact and Date Game.”
Twain tinkered with the game for nearly 10 years before he put it on the market, and it flopped. The game was too complicated, Krass says, and people didn’t know whether to take it seriously.
Of Twain’s inventions, only a self-pasting scrapbook netted a significant profit. The bulk of his income derived from the publication of such books as “The Innocents Abroad,” “Roughing It,” “Tom Sawyer,” “The Prince and the Pauper” and “Life on the Mississippi”; his lecture tours; and newspaper articles.
He fancied himself a venture capitalist. And, Krass reminds readers, his propensity for investing in new technology cost him dearly.
Krass tells how Twain poured the equivalent of millions in today’s dollars over 15 years into a revolutionary typesetting machine being developed by a man named James William Page.
The ultimate failure of that project, Krass recounts, was one of the main reasons for the bankruptcy of the publishing house Twain founded, Charles L. Webster & Co. The company had gleaned millions from the publication of “Huckleberry Finn” and the twin volumes of the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant.
Photo by HNN.
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