Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) was born in Florida, Missouri, of a Virginian family. The family soon moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where Twain was brought up. At school, accroding to his own words, he “excelled only in spelling”. After his father’s death in 1847, Twain was apprenticed to a printer. Her also started his career as a journalist by writing for the Hannibal Journal. Later Twain worked as a licensed Mississippi river-boat pilot (1857-61). His famous penname Twain adopted from the call (‘Mark twain!’—meaning by the mark of two fathoms) used when sounding river shallows.
Twain moved to Virginia City, where he edited two years Territorial Enterprise. On February 3, 1863, ‘Mark Twain’ was born when he signed a humorous travel account with that pseudonym. In 1864 Twain left for California, where worked in San Francisco as a reporter. After hearing a story about a frog, Twain made an entry in his notebook—“Coleman with his jumping frog—bet a stranger $50. Stranger had no frog and C. got him one. In the meantime stranger filled C’s frog full of shot and he couldn’t jump. The stranger’s frog won.” From these lines he developed ‘Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog’ which was published in The Saturday Press of New York on the 18th of November in 1865. It was reprinted all over the country and became the foundation stone of The Celebrated Jumping Frog Of Calaveras County, And Other Sketches (1867). This work marked the beginning of Twain’s literary career.
In 1866 Twain visited Hawaii as a correspondent for The Sacramento Union, publishing letters on his trip. He then set out world tour, travelling in France and Italy. His experiences Twain recorded in The Innocents Abroad (1869). The work, which gained him wide popularity, poked fun at both American and European prejudices and manners. Throughout his life, Twain frequently returned to travel writing—many of his finest novels, such as The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer (1876), dealt with journeys and escapes into freedom.
The success of The Innocents Abroad gave Twain enough financial security to marry Olivia Langdon in 1870, after writing about 189 love letters during his courtship.
Olivia, Twain’s beloved Livy, served and protected her husband devotedly. They moved to Hartford, where the family remained, with occasional trips abroad, until 1891. Twain continued to lecture in the United States and England. Between 1876 and 1884 he published several masterpieces. Tom Sawyer was originally intended for adults. Twain had abandoned the work in 1874, but returned to it in the following summer and even then was undecided if he were writing a book for adults or for young readers. The Prince And The Pauper (1881) was about Edward VI of England and a little pauper who change places. The book was dedicated “to those good-mannered and agreeable children, Susie and Clara Clemens.” Life On The Mississippi (1883) contained an attack on the influence of Sir Walter Scott, whose romanticism have caused according to Twain ‘measureless harm’ to progressive ideas. From the very beginning of his journalistic career, Twain made fun with the novel and its tradition. Although Twain enjoyed magnificent popularity as a novelist, he believed that he lacked the analytical sensibility necessary to the novelist’s art.
Huckleberry Finn (1884), an American Odysseus, was first considered adult fiction. Later Twain wrote in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (1900) : “I have no race prejudices… All that I care to know is that a man is a human being—that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.”
One of Twain’s major achievements is the way he narrates Huckleberry Finn, following the twists and turns of ordinary speech, his native Missouri dialect.
In the 1880s Twain wrote also such books as The Tragedy Of Pudd’head Wilson (1884), a murder mystery and a case of transposed identities, but also an implicit condemnation of a society that allows slavery, and Persibak Recollections Of Joan Of Arc (1885), published under the pseudonym of Sieur Louis de Conte. In the 1890s Twain lost most of his earnings in financial speculations and in the downhill of his own publishing firm, C.L. Webster, which he had established in 1884 in New York City. In 1894 he had invested in the infamous Paige typesetter, which never worked. To recover from the bankrupt, he started a world lecture tour. By 1898 he had repaid all debts. From 1896 to 1900 he resided mainly in Europe.
Twain travelled New Zealand, Australia, India, and South Africa, and returned to the U.S. in 1900. Twain’s travel book, Following The Equator, appeared in 1897. In 1902 Twain made a trip to Hannibal, his home town which had inspired several of his works. His plans for a peaceful and quiet visit were ruined when more than 100 newspapers chronicled his every move.
The death of his wife in 1904 in Florence and his second daughter darkened the author’s life, which is also seen in writings and his posthumously published autobiography (1924). Twain’s view of the human nature had never been very optimistic, but during final years, he become even more bitter. Twain died on April 21, 1910. His autobiography Twain dictated to his secretary A.B. Paine; various versions of it have been published.
During his long writing career, Twain produced a considerable number of essays, which appeared in various newspapers and in magazines, including the Galaxy, Harper’s, the Atlantic Monthly, and North American Review.
