Mark Twain Statistics

• As of 2014, Mark Twain’s most recognized novel, Huckleberry Finn, was estimated to have sold over 20 million copies.
• In addition, it is believed that around 200,000 copies are still being purchased every year.
• Although Mark Twain made a significant amount of money through his written works, he also lost much of his earnings due to investments.
• Between 1880 and 1894 he spent $300,000 (over $9 million in 2023) on the Paige typesetting machine which became obsolete prior to its completion.
• He also lost money through his own publishing company, Charles L. Webster and Company, which ran from 1884 until 1894 when it was declared bankrupt.
• Although the company found great initial success with the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, which sold 350,000 copies prior to publication, its demise began after losing money on a biography of Pope Leo XIII that sold under 200 copies.
• Furthermore, before signing key international copyright agreements in 1891, publishers based in Toronto were printing unauthorized versions of his titles to sell in the US and Canada.
• These copies deprived him of royalty incomes, with Twain estimating that copies of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer alone had deprived him of $10,000 (over $330,000 in 2023).
• Overall, Twain lost the majority of his book profits in addition to a large amount of his wife’s inheritance.
• Despite this, the estimated value of Twain’s estate at the time of his death in 1910 was $471,000 (over $15 million in 2023).
• Since his death, Mark Twain has become one of history’s most misquoted authors, in part due to the overall popularity of his works.

Mark Twain books in order

• In total, Mark Twain’s vast quantity of works published includes:
  • 15 novels (2 published posthumously)
  • 32 short stories (2 published posthumously)
  • 19 collections (8 published posthumously)
  • 17 essays (1 published posthumously)
  • 11 nonfiction works (3 published posthumously)
  • Various other works, including an autobiography with several published versions.
• The first publication by Mark Twain was The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County in 1865.
• The title was a hit for Twain, enabling him to gain a significant level of fame.
• However, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn released in 1884 and described by some as the first great American novel, gave Mark Twain his status as a noteworthy writer.
• Within the United States, the book is considered required reading in many schools.
• Notably, some of Mark Twain’s writings were unfinished or fragmented without being published.

(The below lists include posthumous publications and exclude unfinished or fragmented works. Books published in the same year may not be chronological due to lack of available publication data.)

Novels

Year published	Title	Type	Page count
1873	The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today	Other Novels	630
1876	The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn	168
1881	The Prince and the Pauper	Other Novels	256
1884	Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn	448
1889	A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court	Other Novels	528
1892	The American Claimant	Other Novels	154
1894	Pudd’nhead Wilson	Other Novels	337
1894	Tom Sawyer Abroad	Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn	304
1896	Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc	Other Novels	626
1896	Tom Sawyer, Detective	Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn	66
1904	Extracts from Adam’s Diary	Adam and Eve	89
1906	Eve’s Diary	Adam and Eve	109
1907	A Horse’s Tale	Other Novels	153
1916	The Mysterious Stranger (posthumous)	Other Novels	126
1931	The Private Life of Adam and Eve (posthumous)	Adam and Eve	213

Short stories

Year published	Title	Type	Page count
1865	The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County	Short stories	192
1868	General Washington’s Negro Body-Servant	Short stories	24
1868	Cannibalism in the Cars	Short stories	241
1868	My Late Senatorial Secretaryship	Short stories	N/A
1869	Mark Twain vs Blondin	Short stories	N/A
1870	A Ghost Story	Short stories	26
1874	A True Story, Repeated Word for Word As I Heard It	Short stories	6
1875	Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls	Short stories	24
1875	The Story Of The Bad Little Boy	Short stories	89
1875	The Story Of The Good Little Boy	Short stories	8
1876	A Literary Nightmare	Short stories	3
1876	A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage	Short stories	112
1876	The Canvasser’s Tale	Short stories	N/A
1877	The Invalid’s Story	Short stories	8
1879	The Great Revolution in Pitcairn	Short stories	13
1880	1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors	Short stories	40
1882	The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm	Short stories	26
1882	The Stolen White Elephant	Short stories	330
1891	Luck	Short stories	24
1892	Those Extraordinary Twins	Short stories	44
1893	Is He Living Or Is He Dead?	Short stories	26
1893	The Esquimau Maiden’s Romance	Short stories	11
1893	The Million Pound Bank Note	Short stories	20
1900	The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg	Short stories	54
1902	A Double Barrelled Detective Story	Short stories	57
1904	A Dog’s Tale	Short stories	22
1905	The War Prayer	Short stories	28
1906	Hunting the Deceitful Turkey	Short stories	24
1909	A Fable	Short stories	2
1909	Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven	Short stories	49
1912	My Platonic Sweetheart (posthumous)	Short stories	28
2017	The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine (posthumous)	Short stories	160

Collections

Year published	Title	Type	Page count
1867	The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches	Short story collections	288
1870/71	Memoranda	Essay collections	146
1871	Mark Twain’s (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance	Short story collections	50
1875	Sketches New and Old	Short story collections	83
1877	A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime	Short story collections	104
1878	Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches	Short story collections	140
1888	Mark Twain’s Library of Humor	Short story collections	707
1892	Merry Tales	Short story collections	99
1893	The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories	Short story collections	330
1897	How to Tell a Story and other Essays	Essay collections	28
1906	The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories	Short story collections	523
1919	The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches (posthumous)	Short story collections	140
1923	Europe and Elsewhere (posthumous)	Essay collections	268
1938	The Washoe Giant in San Francisco (posthumous)	Short story collections	143
1962	Letters from the Earth (posthumous)	Essay collections	336
1972	A Pen Warmed Up In Hell (posthumous)	Essay collections	211
1972	Mark Twain’s Fables of Man (posthumous)	Short story collections	740
1981	Early Tales & Sketches: 1864-1865 (posthumous)	Short story collections	384
1996	The Bible According to Mark Twain (posthumous)	Essay collections	416

Essays

Year published	Title	Type	Page count
1865	Advice to Little Girls	Essays	24
1880	On the Decay of the Art of Lying	Essays	26
1880	The Awful German Language	Essays	49
1882	Advice to Youth	Essays	3
1885	The Private History of a Campaign That Failed	Essays	40
1895	Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses	Essays	24
1897	English As She Is Taught	Essays	28
1898	Concerning the Jews	Essays	48
1899	My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It	Essays	32
1900	A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth	Essays	N/A
1901	To the Person Sitting in Darkness	Essays	38
1901	To My Missionary Critics	Essays	15
1901	Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany	Essays	8
1906	What Is Man?	Essays	106
1907	Christian Science	Essays	194
1910	Queen Victoria’s Jubilee	Essays	22
1923	The United States of Lyncherdom (posthumous)	Essays	9

Non-fiction

Year published	Title	Type	Page count
1869	The Innocents Abroad	Nonfiction	685
1872	Roughing It	Nonfiction	166
1876	Old Times on the Mississippi	Nonfiction	108
1877	Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion	Nonfiction	78
1880	A Tramp Abroad	Nonfiction	448
1883	Life on the Mississippi	Nonfiction	416
1897	Following the Equator	Nonfiction	718
1909	Is Shakespeare Dead?	Nonfiction	88
1920	Moments with Mark Twain (posthumous)	Nonfiction	299
1935	Mark Twain’s Notebook (posthumous)	Nonfiction	192
1947	Letters from Hawaii (posthumous)	Nonfiction	320

Other writings

Year published	Title	Type	Page count
1879	Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism	Speech	17
1898	Is He Dead?	Plays	248
1901	The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated	Satirical Lyrics	N/A
1902	The Mammoth Cod	Humor	25
1905	King Leopold’s Soliloquy	Satire	95
1906-07	Chapters from My Autobiography published by North American Review	Autobiographies	288
1908	Little Bessie Would Assist Providence	Poems	34
1924	Autobiography edition compiled and edited by Albert Bigelow Paine (posthumous)	Autobiographies	302
1935	Slovenly Peter (posthumous)	Children’s Books	48
1940	Autobiography edition edited by Bernard DeVoto (posthumous)	Autobiographies	402
1957	Mark Twain: San Francisco Virginia City Territorial Enterprise Correspondent (posthumous)	Letters	117
1959	Autobiography edition compiled and edited by Charles Neider (posthumous)	Autobiographies	422
1982	The Selected Letters of Mark Twain (posthumous)	Letters	328
2010	Mark Twain’s Letters, 1853–1880 (posthumous)	Letters	N/A
2010	Autobiography edition compiled and edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and the Mark Twain Project: Volume 1 (posthumous)	Autobiographies	736
2013	Autobiography edition compiled and edited by Robert Hirst and the Mark Twain Project: Volume 2 (posthumous)	Autobiographies	776
2015	Autobiography edition compiled and edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and the Mark Twain Project: Volume 3 (posthumous)	Autobiographies	792
2017	Territorial Enterprise letters (posthumous)	Letters	N/A

Mark Twain FAQ

How many books did Mark Twain write?

• Mark Twain’s total number of books written includes 15 novels, 32 short stories, 19 collections, 17 essays, 11 nonfiction works and various other published works.
• However, some of these works were repurposed for multiple publications.
• In addition, he also created some additional unfinished and fragmented works.

Where did Samuel Clemens get his pen name Mark Twain from?

• Prior to becoming a writer, Samuel Clemens worked as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River.
• Clemens mentioned that he adopted the pen name “Mark Twain” due to this experience, as it was a nautical term indicating a water depth of two fathoms (safe for navigation).
• However, some people still question the validity of his explanation of the name’s origin.

What is the Mark Twain prize?

• The Mark Twain Prize for American humor was founded in 1998 and is presented each year by John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
• The award is intended to give recognition to individuals that have made significant impacts on American comedy.
• Its recipients have included some of the most recognized comedians in the world.

When was Huckleberry Finn written?

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was written by Mark Twain using pen and notepaper between 1876 and 1883.
• The novel was first published in the UK and Canada in 1884.
• However, its first publication in the US was during 1885.

Why was Huckleberry Finn banned?

• Huckleberry Finn has faced many controversies and various book bans since its publication.
• The biggest concerns about the novel are with regards to racial slurs and stereotyping.
• Those against the book believe it can encourage harmful stereotypes and influence societies to become racially insensitive.
• However, others believe that it should be considered as a reflection of the time in which it was written, providing an accurate depiction of racism.

Why did Mark Twain call it The Gilded Age?

• Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner used the term “The Gilded Age” as the title of their co-authored novel published in 1873.
• They used the term to describe the US post-Civil War era, known for quick economic growth and industrialization. 
• Both authors wanted to critique the social and political issues of the time through the use of a metaphor, believing superficial means were being used as a cover-up to corruption.