'Who was Mark Twain? On our side of the Atlantic we think of him as the author of a couple of imperishable boys' adventures - those of Tom Sawyer and his uncivilisable friend Huckleberry Finn, the picturesque chronicler of the life on the Mississippi river in the days of the early 19th century. But over there he is a national monument; not only the most famous American author of his time, but perhaps of all time…This exhaustive and enthusiastic biography gives a finely detailed and colourful picture of the rough, tough society of the American South and West before the civil war' DAILY MAIL