The Class of 1386...

On this day...The University of Heidelburg was officially opened in 1386. The oldest univeristy in Germany, and only the third established in the Holy Roman Empire, Heidelburg has many things to boast of. Not least is its alumni, whose numbers include 30 Nobel Laureates, German Chancellors, and even a Pope. However, for those of a literary persuasion, there are also several notable associations. Perhaps the most decorated is Nobel Laureate Carl Spittler who was rewarded 'in special appreciation of his epic, "Olympian Spring"'.

Yet despite his success amongst critics and academics, Spittler is by no means the best known inhabitant of the medieval walls. Mark Twain, who visited the univeristy as part of his European tour in 1878, detailed his impression in the travelogue 'A Tramp Abroad', humorously depicting a student body of aristocratic dandies. Such was the popularity of the American writer, that a US Army base in the city now bears his name. The university also plays fictional host to W. Somerset Maugham's Philip Carey in his novel 'Of Human Bondage' and, perhaps more famously, appears on screen in the Oscar winning adaptation of Bernard Schlink's 'The Reader'.

Twain's family sketch...

The public's fascination with Mark Twain is still going strong, one hundred years after his death. A 64-page tribute, handwritten by the Huckleberry Finn author upon the death of his daughter, has sold today at Sotheby's in New York for $242,500 (£164,000). Olive was only 24 when she contracted spinal meningitis in 1896, and it was in honour of her that he wrote 'A Family Sketch', in which he described his daughter as 'a magazine of feelings', adding 'in all things she was intense: in her this characteristic was not a mere glow, dispensing warmth, but a consuming fire'. The work forms part of a larger collection of Twain manuscripts, that are expected to sell for up to $1.2m (£810,000).

Mark Twain hits a century...

This week marks a century since American writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by pen name Mark Twain, died. Author of such novels as 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', and 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer', Twain was called 'the father of American literature' by William Faulkner. Here is a quiz about him. 

On this day...

'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' was first published in America in 1885, two months after it hit British and Canadian shelves. The novel, written by Samuel Clemens under the frequently used pen-name of Mark Twain, and considered one of the 'Great American Novels', is the first major work of American literature to be written in the vernacular. The protagonist had previously been introduced in Twain's 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and narrated two subsequent adventures, leading many to believe that Twain intended the novel to be a sequel.

Two decades on from the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War, the novel explores themes of racial prejudice, often depicting the white characters as selfish, stupid or even violent. Thus it incurred much controversy, the Concord Libray dismissed it as 'tawdry' and 'coarse', lending itself better to 'slums than to intelligent, respectable people'. Such a reception earned it the title of fifth most challenged book of the 1990s in the United States. Yet, it was not without praise. Ernest Hemmingway deemed it 'the best book we've had' from which 'all modern American literature comes'. 

On this day...

The approaching of a new year has incurred many epigrams over the last century by authors and playwrights alike. Here are some of the more famous ones:

• "The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears."
  - W.H. Auden
  
  
• "The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective."
  - G.K. Chesterton
  
  
• "Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever."
  - Mark Twain
  
  
• "Good resolutions are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account."
  - Oscar Wilde
  
  

On this day...

Samuel Clemens, better known by pen name Mark Twain, was born in 1835. Twain began his literary career at the age of 12, contributing articles and sketches to the 'Hannibal Journal'; a newspaper owned by his brother. Yet deciding that it held better monetary prospects, with wages approximately equivalent to that of $155,000 today, Twain opted instead for the job of a steamboat captain; a job he held until the start of the civil war two years later. This conflict, as well as his upbringing in slave state Missouri, left him with a deep impression, and so slavery appears as a reoccuring theme throughout his works. After his brief nautical career, Twain moved back to writing, and it was then that he made his first breakthrough, with novel, 'The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County'. However, his two most popular works are undoubtedly 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' and 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'; the former has come to be recognised as the 'Great American Novel'. Twain suffered great tragedy in his life, losing prematurely his father, daughter and wife; leading to bouts of depression. Twain himself died in 1910, at the age of 74.