Mark Twain

By | January 7, 2019

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Samuel Langhorne Clemens 1835 to 1910 known by pen name Mark Twain American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer UNSPECIFIED - CIRCA 1800: Samuel Langhorne Clemens 1835 to 1910 known by pen name Mark Twain American humorist, satirist, writer, and lect

Mark Twain, who was born with the name Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an author who wrote the well known American classics, Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer. Those two classics are just a small part of the life and times of Mark Twain!

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Early editions of the books ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Huckleberry Finn’ books. Source: (youtube.com)

The Early Life of Samuel Clemens a.k.a. Mark Twain

Samuel Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, in Missouri. He was one of seven children born to John and Jane Clemens. Three of his siblings died when they were children, which left Samuel, his brothers Orion and Henry and a sister named Pamela. Samuel was premature and not expected to live and was a sickly child until he turned seven. When Samuel was four, the Clemens family moved to a port town on the Mississippi River, Hannibal, Missouri. Twain was always drawn to the water, although he did not know how to swim. He claimed to have been saved from drowning nine times! The patriarch of the Clemens family died of pneumonia when Twain was eleven years old. This left the family without income and Twain dropped out of school. He apprenticed as a printer and went on to work as a printer in different cities. His real interest lied in being a steamboat pilot. He studied and began piloting. It was piloting steamboats that gave Clemens his pen name of Mark Twain. The pilots used the word “twain” instead of two. They would call out, “by the mark twain!”, which indicated the river depth was two fathoms, a depth safe for steamboats.