Name: Mark Twain (a.k.a.

Samuel Clemens) Date of Birth: November 30, 1835 Date of Death: April 21, 1910 Place: Florida, Missouri Place: Redding, Connecticut

Best Known Works: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and Puddnhead Wilson Brief Biography: Samuel Clemens was born November 30, 1835, to John and Jane Clemens and was the sixth of seven children. When he was four years old his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri where he spent his childhood and stored many memories that would later spark his imagination for the writings of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. When he was eleven his father passed away and the very next year he became an apprentice typesetter to his brother Orion who owned and ran the daily newspaper. When he turned eighteen he left his brothers newspaper in hopes of finding better work in New York City, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, and Cincinnati. During this time he also self educated himself using public libraries which allowed him to study a much broader topic of subjects than he would have in a college at the time. While traveling down the Mississippi river to New Orleans he picked up his pseudo name, Mark Twain while listening to the steamboat hands call out, mark twain which let the pilot know the river depth was two fathoms. For a few years he was a steamboat pilot himself but when the Civil War started in 1861, he quit and enlisted with the Confederate army. That only lasted a short while, a mere two weeks before he left to work for his brother, a federal government official in Nevada. In 1870 he married Olivia Langdon through whom he met abolitionists Harriet Beecher Stowe and Fredrick Douglas who stretched and challenged his views on slavery and equality. He and Olivia had three daughters, Susy born in 1872, Clara, born in 1874, and Jean born in 1880. Neither Susy nor Jean lived beyond their twenties and Susys death in 1896, his wife Olivias in 1904, and Jeans death in 1909 launched him into a depression which effected him till he died in 1910. In 1909 he was quoted saying, I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together." And sadly sure enough, the day after Halleys Comet passed the earth, he died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910. Twain is counted among one of Americas greatest literary figures with good reason, he lived through a time of Civil War, and later wrote with the underlying issues of slavery shining forth from two of his best known works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn he wrote of scientific breakthroughs such as being able to take finger prints in Puddnhead Wilson, and he dealt with issues of equality in his novel, The Prince and the Pauper. He was only a little above your average Joe in the way that he was a tinker, he worked average jobs, made money, lost money, was

married, and had children. But what managed to set him apart from the rest was his ability to write, to draw you into his story, to make you laugh, cry, and curse with his characters, and to make you think.