Book De*ion Fashioned from the sameexperiences that would inspire the masterpiece Huckleberry Finn,Life on the Mississippi is Mark Twain’s most brilliant and mostpersonal nonfiction work. It is at once an affectionate evocationof the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholyreminiscence of its passing after the Civil War, a pricelesscollection of humorous anecdotes and folktales, and a uniqueglimpse into Twain’s life before he began to write. Written in a prose style that has been hailed as among the greatestin English literature, Life on the Mississippi established Twain asnot only the most popular humorist of his time but also America’smost profound chronicler of the human comedy. The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature Memoir of the steamboat era on the Mississippi River before theAmerican Civil War by Mark Twain, published in 1883. The bookbegins with a brief history of the river from its discovery byHernando de Soto in 1541. Chapters 4-22 describe Twain's career asa Mississ
