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Samuel Langhorne Clemens is born in Florida, Missouri, the sixth child of John Marshall and Jane Lampton Clemens. Mark Twain dies at the age of 74 at his home in Redding, Connecticut.
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William Dean Howell is another author from the realism period. He wrote famous books such as Christmas Every Day and The Rise of Silas Lapham.
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Known as one of the key figures of the 19th-century literary realsim. Some of his works include The Portrait of a Lady, The American, Washington Square, and and The Bostonians.
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Kate Chopin was a feminist writer who wrote about sensitive that were most often experienced by women. Her most popular work was The Awakening, focused on the women's ambitions and the hardships they faced.
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Samuel Clemens begins a successful two-year apprenticeship to become a licensed river pilot. He learns the lingo of the trade, including "mark twain," a phrase that refers to the river depth at which a boat is safe to navigate. He soon adopts it as his pen name.
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At the outbreak of the Civil War, William enters Harvard, honoring his father's wishes by studying chemistry. Three years later, with the family fortune dwindling, he transfers to Harvard Medical School. A
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Henry is eager to do something during the Civil War other than be "just literary." Surprisingly, his father allows him to enroll in Harvard Law School. Law doesn't grip him, though, and he decides to become a full-time writer
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Realism sets itself at work to consider characters and events which are apparently the most prdinary and uninteresting , in order to extract fro these their full value and true meaning. It would apprehend in all particluars the connection between the familar and the extraordinary , and the seen and unseen of human nature.
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As the United States grew rapidly after the Civil War, the inreasing rates of democracy and literacy, the rapid growth in industrialism and urbanization , an expanding population base due to immigration, and a relative rise in middle-class affluence provided a fertile literary enviornment for readers interested in understanding these rapid shifts in culture.
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William joins Harvard naturalist Louis Agassiz's scientific expedition to Brazil. While there, William is temporarily blinded after contracting a smallpox-like ailment. He decides to pursue "a speculative life," not fieldwork
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Realsim is a literary movement that occured during 1865-1900. It focused on giving a view of what was occuring at that time, and on providing insight into what was really going on in the society.
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Kate graduates from the Academy of the Sacred Heart.
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Mark Twain's first book, The Innocents Abroad, becomes a bestseller
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Twain moves his family to Hartford, Connecticut. He publishes Roughing It, the memoir of his years in the West.
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Twain publishes the satiric novel The Gilded Age, its title giving a name to an entire era of American history. His most successful invention, the self-pasting scrapbook, makes its debut the same year.
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is published.
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Twain publishes Life on the Mississippi, his memoir of his years as a steamboat pilot.
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Twain founds his own publishing company, Charles L. Webster & Co. (named after his nephew and co-owner Charles L. Webster). It turns out to be a bad financial move—the company's struggles will eventually ruin his family's finances.
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In the span of less than a year, Twain publishes both his greatest fiction and non-fiction works: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and a biography of President Ulysses S. Grant.
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Howells begins writing the "Editor's Study" column for Harper's New Monthly Magazine. It contains some of his best criticism, and several pieces will be collected in Criticism and Fiction.
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William's daughter becomes very sick and he writes to Mark Twain about if his daughter could read then they maybe could have done the experiment and succeeded.
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Kate unsuccessfully submits the novel Young Dr. Gosse to several publishers. She later destroys the manuscript
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Pudd'nhead Wilson, Twain's last novel, is published. After ten difficult years, Twain's publishing house, Charles L. Webster & Co., finally goes belly-up. The writer finds himself essentially bankrupt. Close friend Henry Huttleston Rogers takes over his finances, saving him from complete disaster.
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Kate writes "The Gentleman from New Orleans", and is listed in the first edition of Who's Who in USA.
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Twain moves into a house in Connecticut that he names Stormfield. Lonely and missing his wife and daughters, he forms a club of young girls called the Angelfish Club who meet regularly at his house to play cards.