A: Good morning, everyone. Happy to see you all in the English corner. I’m your friend, Vivian.

B: I’m Shawn. In today’s program, we’ll introduce a famous American author Mark Twain.

A: ok, let’s start.

A: Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel.’’

Twain was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He developed a close and lasting friendship with Nicola Tesla, and the two spent much time together in Tesla's laboratory.

B: Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse, but evolved into a chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. At mid-career, with Huckleberry Finn, he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism. Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. Many of Twain's works have been suppressed at times for various reasons. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been repeatedly restricted in American high

schools, not least for its frequent use of the word "nigger," which was in common usage in the pre-Civil War period in which the novel was set.

A: Twain's last work was his autobiography. The first volume of autobiography, over 736 pages, was published by the University of California in November 2010, 100 years after his death as Twain wished. It soon became an unexpected best seller, making .Twain one of very few authors publishing new best-selling volumes in all three of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

B: Twain was an adamant supporter of abolition and emancipation, even going so far to say "Lincoln's Proclamation ... not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also." He argued that non-whites did not receive justice in the United States, once saying "I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature ... but I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done to him.” He paid for at least one black person to attend Yale Law School and for another black person to attend a southern university to become a minister.

A: Mark Twain was a staunch supporter of women's rights and an active campaigner for women's suffrage. His "Votes for Women" speech, in

which he pressed for the granting of voting rights to women, is considered one of the most famous in history. Helen Keller benefited from Twain's support, as she pursued her college education and publishing, despite her disabilities and financial limitations.

B: Twain’s legacy lives on today as his namesakes continue to multiply. Several schools are named after him, including Mark Twain Elementary School in Wheeling, Illinois and Mark Twain Elementary School in Houston, Texas, which has a statue of Twain sitting on a bench. There is also Mark Twain Intermediate School in New York. There are several schools named Mark Twain Middle School in different states, as well as Samuel Clemens High School in Schertz, near San Antonio, Texas. There are also other structures, such as the Mark Twain Memorial Bridge.

A:Twain is often depicted wearing a white suit. While there is evidence that suggests that, after Livy's death in 1904, Twain began wearing white suits on the lecture circuit, modern representations suggesting that he wore them throughout his life are unfounded. However, there is evidence of him wearing a white suit before 1904.

B: In 1882, he sent a photograph of himself in a white suit to 18-year-old Edward W. Bok, later publisher of the Ladies Home Journal, with a

handwritten dated note on verso. It did eventually become his trademark, as illustrated in anecdotes about this eccentricity (such as the time he wore a white summer suit to a Congressional hearing during the winter)

B: OK, so much for today. See you next week.

A: See you.