Mark Twain

Mark Twain

“Mark Twain” is the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He was a famous American author and is known for humor put in his work. The two accredited work of him are “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” in 1876 and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in 1885.

Childhood

Mark Twain was the son of mother Jane, a native of Kentucky, and father John Marshall Clemens, a Virginian by birth. When he was 4, family moved to Hannibal, Missouri a port town on the Mississippi River. Hannibal inspired him to create the fictional town of St. Petersburg in his two famous works.

Education

In 1847, the death of Mark Twain’s father lead him to become a printer's apprentice, the very next year. In 1851, he began working as a typesetter and also contributed articles and humorous sketches for the Hannibal Journal. He left Hannibal at the age of 18, and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. Later he joined International Typographical Union (the printers’ union) and kept indulged in public libraries at evening to educate himself.

Career

Most of Mark Twain’s work came while he had been on traveling expeditions. From 1857, he became pilot of a steamboat on a voyage to New Orleans down the Mississippi. He studied this region and scribbled his thoughts in “Life on the Mississippi”. Later in 1861, he moved to silver mining town of Virginia City working as a miner that inspired him to write “Roughing It”, and his experiences in Angels Camp, California in Calaveras County was enough to write "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" noted as best humorous literature work and gave him national attention when it got published in New York Weekly in 1965. During his tour of Europe and the Middle East, he got published his compiled work “The Innocents Abroad”, a popular collection of travel letters. His travelogues were popular and became the basis for his initial lectures.

At the End

In 1906, Mark Twain began writing his autobiography in the North American Review. In 1907, Oxford University awarded Twain an honorary doctorate in Letters. On 21st April, 1910, Twain died of a heart attack in Redding, Connecticut, one day after Hailey comet's closest approach to Earth.