Mark Twain Курышов Руслан Беликова Варвара Акимов Кирилл Косенко Антон МОУ СОШ №19, г. Подольск

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885),the latter often called "the Great American Novel."

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, When he was four, Twain's family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Then he was five years old, he was sent to school. He had many friends in school, and he was their leader. The boys spent many happy hours on the Missouri River.

Twain's biggest publication was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which drew on his youth in Hannibal. Tom Sawyer was modeled on Twain as a child, with traces of two schoolmates, John Briggs and Will Bowen. The book also introduced in a supporting role Huckleberry Finn, based on Twain's boyhood friend Tom Blankenship.

In 1847, when Twain was 11, his father died of pneumonia. The next year, Mark Twain became a printer's apprentice. When he was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. In 1855 his first eight stories were published.

When Samuel was 20, he found a job on a board travelling up and down the Mississippi. On that board he learned the work of a pilot. The pilot had to know the river very well when he took a ship along it.

In 1861 he became a miner on the Comstock Lode, Nevada. Twain failed as a miner and worked at a Virginia City newspaper. Here he first used his pen name. His first success as a writer came when his humorous tall tale, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," was published in a New York weekly. It brought him national attention.

In February 1870, Twain and Olivia Langdon were married in Elmira, New York. She came from a "wealthy but liberal family," and through her he met abolitionists, "socialists, principled atheists and activists for women's rights and social equality“. Their son Langdon died of diphtheria at 19 months. They had three daughters: Susan (1872–1896), Clara (1874–1962) and Jean (1880–1909). The couple's marriage lasted 34 years, until Olivia's death in 1904.

In 1876 Mark Twain published his best novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and in 1884 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

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