Mark Twain or Charles Dickens?

Answer 1

How can you even place these two in the same sentence//?

Mark Twain aka Sam Clemens wrote Americana

Dickens wrote Londonease

Answer 2

Do you want to start an intra- Atlantic dilemma? Seriously, a valid question. I am not a literary Prof. In my opinion Dickens, he was there first. But Mark Twain totally changed the American novel. he made it his own, no nod to Europe, just us America. And Huck Finn is Dickensian to a degree, but in a way better, added the elemental that is and will always be associated with American novels, realism. Dickens is more of a satirist, exaggerates to the point of sublimity. Mark Twain did not achieve that, im my opinion. What a great question, hey, go to the to "The Western Canon" by Harold Bloom, he examines all the greats.

Answer 3

Mark Twain

Answer 4

Dickens

Answer 5

Mark Twain was the nom de plume used by Samuel Clemens, who wrote stories in the vernacular of the US in the1800s. Tom Sawyer is his claim to fame.
Charles Dickens was a very prolific English writer, whose stories dealt with such lovable creatures as Tiny Tim, and Ebenezer Scrooge. He wrote a series of stories, and they are as good today as when he wrote them.
But your question was?

Answer 6

I personally prefer Mark Twain. Not just because he was one of our greatest American authors but also because he was a freethinking down-to-earth remarkable individual at a time when it was unpopular and sometimes even dangerous to think and act against the grain. He was clever, witty, and always put a special twist on his writings and speeches. He was outspoken and sometimes painfully honest and never hesitated to show the foibles of his society for what they really were. He never simply towed the line. At a time when most of his God-fearing Bible thumping fellow Americans were expounding the virtues of Heaven and reserving their spot there, Mark Twain held a less popular but more pragmatic view. The advice he freely gave was, "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." I believe him to be one of the few 19th to early 20th century Americans who would still be comfortable in America in the 21st century.

Afterthought: Possibly not entirely happy with the way things have turned out but, yes, comfortable. He had a way of making himself comfortable in all sorts of unfamiliar and uncomfortable situations.

On Dickens:

I will give Dickens credit for several things though:

1-His advocacy of international copyright.
2-His expressed horror, after returning to England from his first American visit of 1842, of the American passion for tobacco.
3-His condemnation of slavery in America about this time.
4-His insistence on visiting prisons, hospitals for the insane, reform schools, and schools for blind, deaf, and dumb children in almost every city he toured in America.
5-His natural ability to get down and play rough and dirty with children at their own level.

Yes, all in all, he too was a very remarkable man.

Answer 7

Mark Twain definitely. He was amuch better writer.

Dickens is too long and drawn out and he used more words than he needed to because he wrote his stories for newspapers and was paid by the word.

Answer 8

Dickens - Loved the whale adventure.

Answer 9

I prefer Mark Twain because his words are easier to understand and his themes are less depressing.

Answer 10

It depends on whether you want you classic literature with a dose of American or British culture. I personally like Twain better as his stories have a lighter (more humorous) feel for me.