The American Claimant
1892
Mark Twain's 1892 novel takes aim at the sacred cows of aristocracy with the precision of a man who grew up on the Mississippi and learned early that titles don't make the man. The American Claimant follows Simon Lathers, an audacious American who surfaces in England with documentation proving he's the rightful heir to the earldom of Rossmore. The Earl's son, Viscount Berkeley, finds himself strangely sympathetic to this American's claims, caught between dynastic duty and a growing suspicion that inherited authority might be hollow. Enter Colonel Mulberry Sellers, a wildly wealthy and wildly delusional American who dreams of becoming nobility himself, scheming with magnificent incompetence toward goals just out of reach. Twain's satire fires in two directions at once: he skewers the ridiculous pretensions of British aristocracy while asking whether American materialism and ambition are any less absurd. The novel also experiments wildly with form - Twain famously banished all weather descriptions from the main text, relocating them to an appendix the reader is encouraged to consult periodically. It's a playful structural joke from an author who understood that the way you tell a story matters as much as the story itself.
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“There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.””
— Mark Twain
“Prophecy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.””
— Mark Twain
“Standing on the bare ground,”
— Mark Twain
“We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution.””
— Mark Twain
“him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series. I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples. Cooper was a sailor”
— Mark Twain
“Montaigne says, “Books are a languid pleasure,” but I find certain books vital and spermatic, not leaving the reader what he was; he shuts the book a richer man. I would never willingly read any other than such.””
— Mark Twain
“There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life--life's "experiences"--are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side.””
— Mark Twain
“But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern research, was that grand figure of a Roman soldier, clad in complete armor; who, true to his duty, true to his proud name of a soldier of Rome, and full of the stern courage which had given to that name its glory, stood to his post by the city gate, erect and unflinching, till the hell that raged around him burned out the dauntless spirit it could not conquer. We never read of Pompeii but we think of that soldier; we can not write of Pompeii without the natural impulse to grant to him the mention he so well deserves. Let us remember that he was a soldier--not a policeman --and so, praise him. Being a soldier, he staid,--because the warrior instinct forbade him to fly. Had he been a policeman he would have staid, also--because he would have been asleep.””
— Mark Twain
“All diets are wholesome. Some are wholesomer than others, but all the ordinary diets are wholesome enough for the people who use them. Whether the food be fine or coarse it will taste good and it will nourish if a watch be kept upon the appetite and a little starvation introduced every time it weakens.””
— Mark Twain
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Twain, Mark. The American Claimant. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-american-claimant-4fd22127-0c20-46b2-8909-b21deeef2693.Twain, M. (1892). The American Claimant. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-american-claimant-4fd22127-0c20-46b2-8909-b21deeef2693Twain, Mark. The American Claimant. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-american-claimant-4fd22127-0c20-46b2-8909-b21deeef2693.
