Caricature In Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain quickly rose to fame after the release of his story, “Jim Smiley and the Jumping Frog,” and he continued to make a name for himself through the release of stories such as The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Twain saw immense success and fame; he was easily recognizable and wildly popular, even to the point of being called “the greatest American humorist of his age” by the New York Times. In short, Twain was as close to being an international sensation as one could hope for in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, it wasn’t until the later days of his writing career that Twain became so well known. As photography was expensive and hard to come by, caricatures were the method of choice to portray celebrities. And, as

According to Liang, a caricature is meant to exaggerate the most recognizable parts of a subject in order to alter the appearance without making the subject unidentifiable; however at this point in his career, Twain may have been so successful and recognizable that the illustrator needed but to draw him in proper proportion for the public to be able to accurately identify Twain. The lack of exaggeration and the addition of the Queen into this caricature demonstrates Twain’s incredible level of celebrity at this point in his life, and Twain being the focal point of the image as opposed to his works being the focus speaks to what the public knew him for late in his career. In addition, the epitome of Twain’s international and widespread success and his becoming a household name is his being depicted sharing a seat and interacting with the Queen of England. This demonstrates the view that Twain’s influence and reputation may even be as widespread and powerful as those of Queen Alexandra — effectively representing Twain’s achievement of the ultimate level of celebrity at the