Samuel Clemens writes as Samuel Clemens

LeopoldPhilippe · Mar 8, 2015

Samuel Clemens was the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
He wrote by his pen name of Mark Twain.
Suppose Samuel Clemens had written Tom Sawyer under his name of Samuel Clemens. Would the book have been as popular?

Nivek · Mar 8, 2015

The question is why he needed the pen name in first place? did his work as journalist would have been endangered if the book were a controversy or bombed?

Driftless · Mar 8, 2015

In hindsight, probably not a lot of difference.

Maybe he did worry about how his broad humor might play with the public, so he came up with his pen name, just to play it safe?

He came off the riverboats with the start of the Civil War in 1861, and bounced from job to job for a bit before becoming a newspaperman by 1863. He might have been worried about the risk of attaching his own name to early newspaper humor, and later to the goofiness of the "Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". Much of his early writing was humor, and in those days, probably considered light-weight-fluff.

GeographyDude · Mar 9, 2015

I think it would make a difference, just that if something is highly unlikely and an outlier (such as extraordinary success) any change might tend to bring it inward toward the more likely and more common.

And plus, I think a number of writers have talked about the freeing effect of using a good pen name.

Escape Zeppelin · Mar 9, 2015

"I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands-- a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say."

Seems he just thought Samuel Clemens wasn't a great name to write under. Admittedly Mark Twain is a pretty catchy. He did write under some other names before he chose Twain too.

LeopoldPhilippe · Mar 10, 2015

Samuel Clemens used the name "Sieur Louis de Conte" for Joan of Arc.

LeopoldPhilippe · Mar 12, 2015

Samuel Clemens spent over a decade researching Saint Joan of Arc.
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was originally published in Harpers Magazine in 1895 as chapters attributed to the fictitious author Sieur Louis de Conte.

LeopoldPhilippe · Mar 14, 2015

Samuel Clemens used the pseudonym Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass for three pieces he contributed to "Keokuk Post".

LeopoldPhilippe · May 3, 2015

In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain says:
"I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre, so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one (Mark Twain), and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands -- a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth."

CalBear · May 4, 2015

Unfortunately I can only kick you once for multiple offenses.

Thread locked. OP previously kicked.