Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) is known as one of America's most outstanding authors, among his works the most famous of which is Huckberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. But Twain was also a brilliant essayist and literary critic. In Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences, Twain takes aim at and derides the work of author James Fenimore Cooper, jeering at, for example, Cooper's portrayal of the American Indian. Is Shakespeare Dead?, for its part, covers the controversy over who authored Shakespeare's works through satire and anecdote.