Mark and Livy: The Love Story of Mark Twain and the Woman Who Almost Tamed Him

By Resa Willis and Willis Resa

Book Overview

Olivia Langdon Clemens was not only the love of Mark Twain's life and the mother of his children, she was also his editor, muse, critic and trusted advisor. She read his letters and speeches. He relied on her judgment on his writing, and readily admitted that she not only edited his work, but also edited his public persona.Until now, little has been known about Livy's crucial place in Twain's life. In Resa Willis's affecting and fascinating biography, we meet a dignified, optimistic women who married young, raised three sons and a daughter, endured myriad health problems and money woes and who faithfully traipsed all over the world with Twain--Africa, Europe, Asia--while battling his moodiness and her frailty.Twain adored her. A hard-drinking dreamer with an insatiable wanderlust, he needed someone to tame him. It was Livy who encouraged him to finish his autobiography even through the last stages of her illness. When she died in 1904, Twain's zest for life and writing was gone. He died six years later.
A triumph of the biographer's art, Mark and Livy presents the fullest picture yet of one of the most influential women in American letters.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 041594774X
• ISBN13: 9780415947749
• Release Date: November 2003
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 366 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Mark Twain and the editor who just happened to be his wife

It's not simply that Willis provides readers with a new way of understanding Twain's life and work--it's that she does so with such an eloquent prose style. If on the surface Olivia Langdon Clemens appears to be the quintessential Victorian lady--frail, neuresthenic, domestic--her inner strength and unflappable judgement are skillfully uncovered by Willis, who in this work produces that rarest of things: a literary biography that is both literary and biographical.

A lively account and "must" reading for all Mark Twain fans.

Mark and Livy represents the only full-length survey of the woman behind Mark Twain - wife Olivia Clemens, or Livy. Chapters consider her entire role in his life, from her position as wife and mother to her involvement in his writings and career. A lively account which will appeal to Twain fans and readers of biography alike.