Mark Twain – Financial Troubles and Recovery
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, was born in Florida on 30th November 1835. Out of seven children, he was the sixth one. He is not only known for his writing but also was a famous journalist and humor. He is known to produce magical writing which attracted worldwide audience and earned him as being a famous writer. Till today Twain is remember greatly and his work read by many.
Twain made a lot of money through his writings. Some of his famous workings were The Gilded Age, Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and Huckleberry Finn. A large portion of this money was lost due to bad investments. These investments were mainly due to investments in new technologies especially the Paige typesetting machine. It was an engineered mechanical device that was known to amaze the viewers when working. The problem with this device was that it was prone to a lot of breakdowns and so Mark Twain spent a huge sum of $300,000 on the device. Before the device was perfected, the device was replaced by Linotype in the market. Due to this, Mark Twain lost a huge portion of profits made by his books as well as large portion of money inherited from his wife Livy.
Mark Twain was very much fascinated with the science. He developed strong friendship with Nikola Tesla. He along with Tesla spent a lot of time in Tesla’s laboratory. Twain is said to have invented a new steam engine type, Kaolatype and infants bed clamp.
Another source of Twain’s financial trouble was publishing house. He also lost a huge portion of money through the publishing house. The publishing house enjoyed a lot of initial success by selling Ulysses S. Grant memories. Soon after this initial success, the publishing house broke and lost a lot of money. This was because of the idea that similar to selling memories of Ulysses S. Grant. It was thought that the public would now be interested and buy the biography of Pope Leo XIII. The idea was back fired and only less than hundreds copies sold.
To recover financially, Mark Twain started delivering lectures along with his writings. Along with his new friend he recovered financially. The lost lasting friendship in 1893 with Henry Huttleston Rogers, a financier, who was the Standard Oil’s principal. The recovery process began with Henry asking Twain to file for the bankruptcy. After this he asked Twain to his written works’ copyrights to his wife. This prevented the creditors from getting possession of his works. Then, Rogers went on to take charge of Twain’s money completely till all creditors were paid.
Finally, to completely pay off all creditors, Twain went on to deliver lectures worldwide, despite the fact that Twain was not under any legal obligations. In 1900, Twain then returned back to America after he had earned enough for paying off his financial debts.
About the Author
Dennis is a Mark Twain fan. He has read several Mark Twain’s books like A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He would like to share his fun of reading Mark Twain’s top selling novels to the public.
Get complete set of Mark Twain’s best selling books at The Mark Twain Classical Ebook Collection.
Famous Authors – Mark Twain
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