Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in a small village of Florida, on November 30, 1835. Sam spent his boyhood on the west bank of the great Mississippi River. He left school at an early age, because lie had to work for a living. For a few years he worked as a printer for his brother Orion's paper. During those years he wrote a few humorous stories. A New York periodical published one of them.

Sam tried to learn the trade of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi river.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861 Sam left for the West because he did not want to fight for the Confederate Army. Later he joined miners searching for silver but failed to become rich.

In 1862 he began to work for the Virginia City paper as a reporter and a humorist. In February 1863 he adopted the pseudonym Mark Twain. In 1865 “The Jumping Frog”, his first book of humorous stories was published.

In 1867 Twain took a trip on the ship “The Quaker City”. The collection of sketches “Innocents Abroad” which he wrote about the journey brought him fame.

In 1876 he published his world famous book “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and only eight years later he finished his masterpiece “Huckleberry Finn”.

In 1935 Ernest Hemingway wrote that “Huckleberry Finn” was the first and best book in American literature. William Faulkner said the same in 1955. Before Mark Twain, they said, there was only an American dialect, but after him there was an American language.

Many critics say that Twain's books give a better picture of the period than history books.

Mark Twain died in 1910.