“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.
