Mark Twain is the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 -
1910). He was born and brought up in the American state of Missouri
and, because of his father's death, he left school to earn his
living when he was only twelve. He was a great adventurer and
travelled round America as a printer; prospected for gold and set
off for South America to earn his fortune. He returned to become a
steam-boat pilot on the Mississippi River, close to where he had
grown up. The Civil War put an end to steam-boating and Clemens
briefly joined the Confederate army - although the rest of his
family were Unionists! He had already tried his hand at newspaper
reporting and now became a successful journalist. He started to use
the alias Mark Twain during the Civil War and it was under this pen
name that he became a famous travel writer. He took the name from
his steam-boat days - it was the river pilots' cry to let their men
know that the water was two fathoms deep.
Mark Twain was always nostalgic about his childhood and in 1876 The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer was published, based on his own
experiences. The book was soon recognised as a work of genius and
eight years later the sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
was published. The great writer Ernest Hemingway claimed that 'All
modern literature stems from this one book.'
Mark Twain was soon famous all over the world. He made a fortune
from writing and lost it on a typesetter he invented. He then made
another fortune and lost it on a bad investment. He was an
impulsive, hot-tempered man but was also quite sentimental and
superstitious. He was born when Halley's Comet was passing the
Earth and always believed he would die when it returned - this is
exactly what happened.
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