Mark Twain

Mark Twain, who was born Samuel Clemens is one of the most famous and popular American writers of all time. He is best know for having written classic works such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. He was born in Florida, Missouri on November 30th 1835 and by the age eleven his father and three of his siblings had already died. After his fathers death he became a printers apprentice and began working as a typesetting and contributing articles and humorous pieces to the Hannibal Journal which his brother owned. When he turned eighteen he left for New York to work as a printer there before returning to Missouri and age twenty-two.

Upon returning to Missouri he decided that he wanted to pursue a career as a steamboat pilot which was a respected and lucrative source of income at the time. He studied for two years before earning his steamboat pilot license in 1859. After the accidental death of his brother, his traveling and eventual marriage to his wife Olivia, along with the birth of several of their children, Twain moved to Hartford, Connecticut  in 1873 where he lived for seventeen years while he wrote many of his best works.

Twain maintained a constant love for science and technology, investing in many new inventions and experiments (most of which fell through) while also traveling around the world and being in constant demand as a feature speaker for many mens clubs. In the midst of this work Twain suffered from a period of deep depression relating mostly to the deaths of two of his daughters, his wife, and his best friend. He died in 1910 after a heart attack.

Most of Twain’s writing was light and humorous but throughout his career it evolved into an ongoing dialogue of the social and psychological aspects of people. He was extremely good at writing in colloquial terms and set the way for future writers to embellish and stylize their writing using similar techniques. Because of Twain’s background in Missouri (which was a slave state at the time of his living there) and his use of various Civil War era slang many of his works have been restricted and banned in American high schools repeatedly. Despite these bannings, Twain is considered to be the one of the founding writers of great American literature and is stated as being so by many others including Faulkner, Hemingway, and President William Howard Taft.

Much of Twain’s writing also takes on a mystical element which isn’t surprising given his string belief in the paranormal and the remarkable circumstances of both his birth and death being in alignment with Halley’s Comet. Twain even predicted his own death at the comets return in 1910 and he died one day after it’s closest distance to earth. These beliefs show up in his writing throughout his life, specifically in works like The Prince And The Pauper and Pudd’nhead Wilson. Some of his interest in otherworldly matters along with religion showed up in pieces like The Mysterious Stranger which was published after his death. For the most part though Twain’s writing is used as a basis for comparative American literature and has inspired many other writers and readers for years.