Life on the Mississippi (1883) is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War. It is also a travel book, recounting his trip along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans many years after the war.
Simultaneously published in 1883 in the United States and Great Britain, the book is the first submitted to a publisher as a typewritten manuscript. Twain did not, however, use the typewriter himself. His secretary, Isabel V. Lyon, typed from Twain's manuscript.
The book begins with a brief history of the river from its discovery by Hernando de Soto in 1541. Chapters 4–22 describe Twain’s career as a Mississippi steamboat pilot, the fulfillment of a childhood dream.
The second half of Life on the Mississippi tells of Twain’s return, many years after, to travel the river from St. Louis to New Orleans. By then the competition from railroads had made steamboats passé, in spite of improvements in navigation and boat construction. Twain observes new, large cities on the river and records his ruminations on greed, gullibility, tragedy, and bad architecture.
Life on the Mississippi was the book that launched the now well known Samuel Clemens’ career as a “serious” author. Clemens, more well known by the title Mark Twain, paints Mississippi steamboat living and the workings of the river itself as a tribute to that great river.
Twain uses this novel as a combination of an autobiography of his early days as a steamboats man, and a collection of anecdotes about the people who made their living both along the great river and on it.It was from this work that the novel Huckleberry Finn would emerge, using the raw material to set the backdrop for this work which is considered Twain’s greatest novel.