Twain's humour

Twain's phenomenal success as a writer came first and foremost because he was very funny. His particular background (and especially his time in the West) and the antidote he provided to the more genteel forms of comedy of the time, go some way towards explaining his impact. So too does his avoidance of the phonetic techniques of many of the fellow humorists with whom he had most in common. For example, Artemus Ward begins his ‘The Press’ with the sentence: ‘I want the editers to cum to my Show free as the flours of May, but I don't want um to ride a free hoss to deth.’ And Twain's quick-witted responses to day-to-day events and his apparent ability to produce a comic quip at will were legendary. His May 1897 reply to a London newspaper correspondent following rumours of his demise, ‘the report of my death was an exaggeration’ – or, as it has been refined in folk memory, ‘the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated’ – is now part of our cultural repertoire of best-known quotations. While some of his ironic aphorisms from ‘Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar’ (in Pudd'nhead Wilson) are also well-known: