MARK TWAIN

An adventure

By

KRISHA Singh
Kshitiz
Naman
Manvi
Pooja
 Real name :

Samuel langhorne Clemens

when he started writing he changed his name to

MARK TWAIN

He was an American writer,

humorist,entrepreneur,publisher and lecturer.

He was praised as the greatest humorist the United

States has produced and as the father of American
Literature.
 Childhood
Samuel Langhorne Clemens popularly known as “Mark Twain” was born
on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri.

He was born right after Halley’s Comet appeared and the comet was
scheduled to return in 1910.

He was the sixth of seven children of Jane a native of Kentucky, and

John Marshall Clemens a native of Virginia. His parents met when
his father moved to Missouri. twain was of Cornish, English, and
ScotsIrish descent. Only three of his sibling survived childhood

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 The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn. Slavery was legal in Missouri at the time, and it became a
theme in these writings.

The two most important days in your

life are the day you are born and the
day you find out why." – Mark Twain.
 Early life
Twain describes his boyhood in Life on the Mississippi, stating that "there was but one permanent
The secret of
getting ahead is
ambition" among his comrades: to be a steamboat man. "Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot,
even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary – from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and getting started
fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay." As Twain described it, the pilot's prestige exceeded that of the
captain. ~ Mark Twain

Steamboat pilot Horace E. Bixby took Twain on as a cub pilot to teach him the river between New
Orleans and St. Louis for $500 (equivalent to $16,000 in 2021), payable out of Twain's first wages after
graduating.
Steamboat pilot Horace E. Bixby took Twain
on as a cub pilot to teach him the river between New
Orleans and St. Louis for $500 (equivalent to $16,000 in 2021), payable out of Twain's first wages
after graduating.
Twain studied the Mississippi, learning
its landmarks, how to navigate its
currents effectively, and how to read the river and its constantly shifting channels,
reefs, submerged snags, and rocks that would "tear the life out of the strongest
vessel that ever floated". It was more than two years before he received his pilot's
license.
While training, Samuel convinced his younger brother Henry to work with him, and even arranged

a post of mud clerk for him on the steamboat Pennsylvania. On June 13, 1858, the steamboat's boiler
exploded; Henry succumbed to his wounds on June 21. Twain claimed to have foreseen this death in
a dream a month earlier which inspired his interest in parapsychology; he was an early member of
the Society for Psychical Research.

The novels of our childhood

The prince and the
pauper

Set in 1547, it tells the story of two young

boys who were born on the same day and
are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a
pauper who lives with his abusive,
alcoholic father in Offal Court off
Pudding Lane in London, and Edward VI
of England, son of Henry VIII of
England. James R. Osgood & Co.
 Adventures of
Huckleberry Fin
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one
of Mark Twain's best-known and most
important novels. The novel tells the
story of Huckleberry Finn's escape from
his alcoholic and abusive father and
Huck's adventurous journey down the
Mississippi River together with the
runaway slave Jim.
 Marriage and
children
Twain and Olivia Langdon corresponded throughout 1868. After she rejected his first marriage
proposal, they were married in Elmira, New York in February 1870, where he courted her and
managed to overcome her father's initial reluctance. She came from a "wealthy but liberal family";
through her, he met abolitionists, "socialists, principled atheists and activists for women's rights and
social equality", including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and utopian socialist writer
William Dean Howells, who became a long-time friend.

The Clemenses lived in Buffalo, New York, from 1869 to 1871. He owned a stake in the Buffalo Express
newspaper and worked as an editor and writer. While they were living in Buffalo, their son Langdon
died of diphtheria at the age of 19 months.

They had three daughters:-

Susy (1872–1896)
Clara (1874–1962)
Jean (1880–1909)
The couple's marriage lasted 34 years until Olivia's death in 1904. All of the Clemens family are buried
in Elmira's Woodlawn Cemetery.

 r life and death

Late l ife.
n h is la te r
o m a n y t h i ngs i
s d e a li n g w ith s
wa
Mark Twain
n h a t t a n . He
S t r e e t in M a
4 W est 1 0 t h w h en
e a r s a t 1 gan i n 1 8 9 6
e d i n h i s l a ter y o n w h i c h b e
Twain liv f d e e p d e p ressi 4 a n d J e a n 's
u g h a p e r i od o 's d e a t h i n 190
passed thr o n g i t i s . Olivi a h i s c l o s e
i e d of m e n i y 2 0 , 19 0 9 ,
r S u s y d . O n M a
his daughte 9 , deep e n e d h i s g l oom
b e r 2 4 , 1 9 0 e d s u d d e n l y.
on Decem e n r y R o g e rs di
friend H

a h e a r t a t t ack
r a t e ; h e d i e d of
w a s e e r i ly accu
in 's p r e d ic tion r m f i e l d.
In 1907 T w a 1 9 1 0, in S to
on A p r i l 2 1 ,

ly o ur entire and
a lly an d g enu in e
be co m e re
We never il w e a re d ead
nes t s elv es un t
ho
Mark Twain: Famous works & achievements
SOME OF HIS FAMOUS WORKS:
THE INNOCENTS ABROAD
ROUGHING IT
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR

Twain was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) by Yale University in 1901.
Then in 1902, the Doctor of Law by the University of Missouri, Oxford University would also award him
the Doctorate of Law.

Today he is best remembered as the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

The end
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