The Famous Authors Series - Mark Twain (1996)

Synopsis: "Famous Authors" examines the men and women behind the words that brought them literary kudos. In "Mark Twain," viewers learn how the Missouri-born satirist created his eccentric characters... "Famous Authors" examines the men and women behind the words that brought them literary kudos. In "Mark Twain," viewers learn how the Missouri-born satirist created his eccentric characters and situations, which were loosely based on his rearing along the Mississippi River. Though his conventional schooling ended early, Twain honed his craft as a newspaper scribe. He cut against the grain of contemporaries because he let his characters speak in the vernacular. Unafraid to slaughter sacred cows, he exposed the hypocrisy of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do Christians in "Huckleberry Finn," and caricatured the insincerity of "civilized" French society in "The Innocents Abroad." [More]