Mark Twain: biography

Who is he? Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, ) is an American icon. His books - like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – are known all through the world. These books define two sides of an imagined American childhood. He was - still is - the cigar-smoking humorist-sage whose very name inspires smiles: "As Mark Twain said..." But Mark Twain's life and career were more varied and complex than most people realize. He was a printer and journalist, steamboat pilot, gold and silver miner, a newspaper editor, author, and publisher. He was also deeply involved in American political and cultural issues, and an active participant in several anti- imperialist movements.

Although he first began to wear his famous white suit in public in 1906, just a few years before his death, that is the most familiar image of Mark Twain for people throughout the world. What did he look like?

The very beginning Sam was born in November 30, 1835 in a very small town called Florida near Hannibal in Missouri.

The village contained a hundred people and Sam “increased the population by 1 per cent.” Most of the houses were of logs.

Beyond and beyond, shining in the sun, the Mississippi rolled to the distant sea. The beside this river, Samuel Clemens grew into his boyhood.

Sam saw negrous chained like animals for transportation to richer slave markets to the South. His father owned slaves. For a girl of fifteen he paid twelve dollars; for a woman of twenty-five – he paid twenty-five dollars; for a strong negro woman of forty – he paid forty dollars. All the negroes of his own age were good friends of Sam. The young boy has always remember these sad things.

Better things Sam remembered also. He remembered below the village woods “a heavenly place” where he played with the boys. When he was four Sam’s family moved to Hannibal. There in 1849 his father died. Before the funeral Sam promised to his mother to be a better boy, to go to work, and care for her. Sam soon had to live school and take a part time job as delivery and errand boy for Hannibal’s newspaper; serving at times as grocer’s clerk, blacksmith’s helper and bookseller’s assistant. Then he tried to write comic stories and sketches. His first known publication was a story "A Gallant Fireman“. It was published in “Hannibal Western Union” (January 16, 1851). Sam was 15 years old.

Pilot on Mississippi But the life of comic newspaper author was very hard and gave very little money. Traveling by the streamer Paul Jones to New Orleans Sam Clemens liked the job of steamboat pilot. In April 1857 Sam started his four years of life on the Mississippi – his pilot days. Many years later he described those days in his famous book.

For seven month Sam trained a cub pilot. The training went on and on. All signs of the sky were very important to him; at night and in fog new dangers came: cool bargers, floating logs... “Piloting on the Mississippi River was not work to me, it was play – delightful play, adventures play – and I loved it.” Sam listened to the Mississippi leadman’s call: “M-a-r-k three  M-a-r-k twain  ” On the twenty-third birthday he got a pilot’s license, and took the name of Mark Twain. Sam was happy, and life was beautiful. He played the piano, sang songs of the river; he was nice and everybody liked him. It was as pilot that Mark Twain learned to know human nature of the world round him. When in 1861 the Civil War broke out steam boating ceased and Mark Twain was left without work.

Happy years Trough the next years Sam lived mostly in Nevada and earned his own living as he could. He had been a printer, a miner, a newspaper man. When he was 29, he became a special correspondent of the Sacramento Union in California. Now he would travel around the world, and he would write of the places he saw and the people he meet. Sam Clemens married Olivia (Livy) Langdon on the 2nd of February, The next day they went to Buffalo where Sam bought a share in newspaper. Livy Samuel Olivia and Clara, their elder daughter, 1895

Happy years Livy’s father Jervis Langdon had bought and furnished a new and beautiful house for the young couple in a fashionable street in Buffalo. Sam worked a lot, editing Buffalo Express, writing for the New York magazines, and collecting material for a new book Roughing It – the story of his Nevada mining and newspaper days. It was published when he was thirty-six. It was a great success. The Clemens’s moved than to Hartford, Connecticut. The twenty years between 1875 and 1894 were the happiest and the wealthiest for Samuel Clemens. He wrote his best books in Hartford, in a wonderful house built for him and his family. The rooms were large and always joyful with company and friends. Here two his daughters Clara and Susy were born.

Mark Twain’s house in Hartford, Connecticut, constructed 1874.

Mark Twain’s family and house in Hartford Dining-room Stairway and hall

Samuel Clemens in Oxford robe From 1851 until 1871, Mark Twain wrote primarily for newspapers and magazines. The success of his second book, The Innocents Abroad (1869), and a contract for a third, Roughing It (1872), allowed him to leave journalism to become a full-time as an author of books. Mark Twain was writing and lecturing. In June, 1874, he began one of his greatest books The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – the book about his own childhood. Mark Twain published more than forty books and pamphlets during his lifetime. The famous writer

Mark Twain’s books 1869·The Innocents Abroad 1872·Roughing It 1876·The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1882·The Prince and the Pauper 1883·Life on the Mississippi 1885·Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1889·A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court 1897·Following the Equator 1900 The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays 1904·Extracts from Adam's Diary 1906·What Is Man? 1906·Eve's Diary 1907·Christian Science 1907·A Horse's Tale 1909·Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

The most famous books by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer first came out in By the time Mark Twain died, it had become an American classic, and it remains perhaps the best-loved of all his books among general readers. One of pages from the first edition The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Illustrations to the first edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Aunt Polly Tom painting the fence Tom and Bekky

Illustrations to the first edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Tom Joe the Indian On the islandAt the Sunday school

Vershkova T. 404a 2006