Mark Twain

1835—1910

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to the world as Mark Twain, was the son of a small-town lawyer in the State of Missouri. When the boy was five years old, he was sent to school. Little Samuel did not like school but he had many friends and was their leader. In summer when school was over, the boys spent many happy hours on the Missouri River.

As Mark Twain said later, many events in "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" really took place and the characters were from real life. Tom Sawyer was very often a portrait of the writer; Huckleberry Finn was his friend, Tom Blankcnship; Aunt Polly was his mother; Tom's brother Sid was like his own brother Henry. When Samuel was eleven years old, his father died leaving nothing to his wife and four children. Samuel had to leave school and look for work. His elder brother was working as a printer and he helped the boy to learn printing. For some years Samuel worked as a printer for the town newspaper and later for his brother, who at the time had started a small newspaper. The two young men published it themselves. Samuel wrote short humorous stories and printed them for their newspaper. In 1853 Samuel decided to leave home. He went first to St. Louis, then to New York, and to Philadelphia where he worked as a printer. When Samuel was a boy, he dreamed of becoming a sailor. At twenty he found a job on a boat travelling up and down the Mississippi, but he had to pay 100 dollars to get the job. On that boat he learned the work of a pilot. From this he got his pen-name "Mark Twain". The pilot had to know the river very well when he took a ship along it. The sailors watched the marks and shouted to the pilot "mark three", "mark twain", which means "mark two". [81] Later the young man worked with the gold miners in California for a year. Here he began to write short stories and humorous sketches about camp life. He sent them to the newspaper under the name of "Mark Twain". His publishers liked his stories and he was invited to work as a journalist for a newspaper. Many professions that he tried gave Mark Twain a knowledge of life and people and helped him to find his true profession - the profession of a writer. In 1870 he married, and a new and happy life began for him. He had one son and 3 daughters whom he loved very much and was the happiest man when they where with him. As a journalist Mark Twain travelled much over the country. He saw the corruption of the American press and of the American Govern­ment which he later attacked in many of his works("Running for Governor", "The Gilded Age", 1873).

In different stories Mark Twain showed race discrimination and false democracy("Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again"). In the story "A Defence of General Funston" he criticized the imperialist policy of the American Government. Chernishevsky said that "American satirical and critical literature began with Mark Twain".

In 1876 the writer published "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"and in 1884 "The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin"- the novels that are now known to children and grown ups all over the world. The writer showed boys and girls in the novels with such sympathy and understanding that readers always see themselves in these characters. Mark Twain protested there against slavery and one of the main characters in the novel "Hucklebery Fin" is a Negro, Jim, who is honest, brave and kind.

The bourgeois critics of that time did not like the books and said the novels gave a bad example for young people. After this kind of criticism the public libraries took "Tom" and "Huck" off their shelves.

The profession of a writer did not bring much money to Mark Twain and he had to give the lectures on literature and read his stories to the public. He visited many countries, and for a long time lived in England. In 1907 the Oxford University gave Mark Twain an honorary doctorate of letters.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote: "All modern American literature comes from book by Mark Twain called 'Huckleberry Fin'." [82]