Famous Funny Fellows: Restored Classics to Go Edition

Famous Funny Fellows offers a spirited tour through the rise of American newspaper humor, introducing the comic writers who turned wit into a national art. Will M. Clemens frames the subject with playful confidence, then presents vivid portraits of Mark Twain, Artemus Ward, Bill Nye, Eugene Field, Josh Billings, Max Adeler, Bill Arp, J. M. Bailey, and others whose sketches, lectures, and newspaper columns shaped the country's taste for satire. At the center stands Mark Twain, traced from Missouri boyhood and steamboat days to his Western journalism, the birth of his pen name, and the success of The Celebrated Jumping Frog. The biography follows his leap to international fame with Innocents Abroad, his marriage, Hartford home life, steady work habits, and later triumphs in Roughing It, The Gilded Age, Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, and The Prince and the Pauper. Twain emerges as both mischievous satirist and thoughtful, disciplined writer. Artemus Ward's rise from printer's apprentice to beloved lecturer and author, his mock-plainspoken "Census," and his untimely death add warmth and pathos. Alongside him, Bailey, Bill Arp, Max Adeler, and J. H. Williams reveal the many forms of American comic journalism. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.