Mark Twain 1835 - 1910

General Background Mark Twain was born as Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835 in the city of Florida, Missouri Clemens was the third of five children His parents were John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens He grew up in the town of Hannibal near St. Louis and New Orleans When Clemens was 12, his father passed away from pneumonia, and Clemens joined his brother’s newspaper as an editorial assistant

Early Career After his father’s death, Clemens had to work to support the family In 1853, Clemens traveled and worked as an itinerant journeyman printer in St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, and Keokuk (Iowa) In 1856 he left Cincinnati for New Orleans and became a riverboat pilot which was extremely lucrative and prestigious for Clemens until the Civil War began, which ended commercial river traffic

The Name, Mark Twain After the war started, Clemens left the Mississippi River Valley to avoid being drafted by the Union Navy for his piloting skills He may have been part of a loosely put together Confederate militia which he left His brother, Orion, was appointed the secretary of the Nevada Territorial government and Clemens joined him in moving west where he began to become a humorist, lecturer, journalist, and author

The Name, Mark Twain It was in the west where Clemens started to write about the west to tell Easterners what it was like that Clemens took up the pen name Mark Twain. It literally meant in riverboat terms “two fathoms deep”, and he did it because it was the fashion of the time to use a pen name when writing

Professional Career In the West, Twain began writing for newspapers such as the Territorial Enterprise and the Californian His early writing was modeled on the humorous journalism of the time, and he modeled a lot of his writing off of his room mate Dan De Quille He also become friends with Bret Harte, a professional lecturer, and Artemus Ward, a comic It was during this time that Twain gained success as a writer in his retelling of ”The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” in 1865

Professional Career Twain went on to write a series of letters, deliver several lectures, and travel extensively. Twain was a great lecturer, and had a skill at writing hilarious satires His public remarks and scoffing at certain values would anger many people, but that also helped his book sales In 1870 he began writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer which he published in 1876 In 1883 he wrote a critique of Southern Romanticism in his Life on the Mississippi (1883) In 1876 he began writing a sequel to Tom Sawyer’s adventures, and in 1884 he published the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Personal Life Mark Twain married Olivia Langdon in New York in 1870 Langdon was the wealthy daughter of a coal dealer, and this launched Twain into a higher socio-economic spectrum This often confused him as his fascination with wealth, and his connection to his roots began to show in his writing Later in his life, Twain began to experience a series of misfortunes as his health deteriorated, his youngest daughter became epileptic, and his oldest daughter passed away. His wife at the time, Livy, began to face perpetual health conditions

Personal Life Twain was world famous in his later years, and the press would often consult him on every matter of general interest Although he had an acid tongue about his views on political, military, and social subjects he only confided to his best friends the true depth of his disillusionment Twain knew very well the country’s various regions and history, and he represented, expressed, and attacked the American character all at once. Humor was his way of bringing together these three approaches. Howells (Twain’s friend) observed “Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes – I knew them all and the all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists’ they were like one another and like other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.” Mark Twain died of a heart attack in 1910 the day after Halley’s Comet shot past earth. He was also born the same year that it shot past earth in 1835.

Twain’s Immortalized Legacy Mark Twain’s writing style evolved over time as it started with mainly humorous satire, and later began to encompass several conventional and disruptive themes He was an extremely successful fiction writer, and he maintained that throughout his career Twain was known for his controversial writing, and he would incorporate elements that would anger many people such as his stances on race, the Civil War, society, politics, and military

Works, Influences, and Legacy Twain’s early influences came from Dan De Quille, Bret Harte, and Artemus Ward. Later in life he was influenced by his travels and what he had seen around the world. He is most remembered for his works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn although he has a number of other books, letters, and lectures that he is well known for. Twain was an extremely successful writer of fiction Ernest Hemmingway once called Huckleberry Finn the source of “all modern American literature.”

Sources "A Life Lived in a Rapidly Changing World: Samuel L. Clemens‚ 1835- 1910." Welcome to the Mark Twain House & Museum - Biography of Mark Twain. N.p., 2017. Web. 31 Jan. 2017. “Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens): 1835-1910.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007. 118-121. Print.