His brother Pleasant Hannibal (1828) died at three weeks of age, his sister Margaret (1830–1839) when Twain was three, and his brother Benjamin (1832–1842) three years later. Twain was of Cornish, English, and Scots-Irish descent. His parents met when his father, a lawyer called to the bar in Kentucky, tried to help Jane's father and uncle avoid bankruptcy. He was the sixth of seven children of Jane ( née Lampton 1803–1890), a native of Kentucky, and John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847), a native of Virginia. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. He understood that the photographic printing process reversed the contents of an image in the same way backwards moveable type was reversed in printing to give clear copy. Biography Early life Samuel Clemens, age 15 holding metal type in a composing stick that spells out his first name. He was born shortly after an appearance of Halley's Comet, and predicted that his death would accompany it as well, dying a day after the comet was at its closest to Earth. Twain eventually paid all his creditors in full, even though his declaration of bankruptcy meant he was not required to do so. He filed for bankruptcy in the wake of these financial setbacks, but in time overcame his financial troubles with the help of Standard Oil executive Henry Huttleston Rogers. Twain earned a great deal of money from his writing and lectures, but invested in ventures that lost most of it, such as the Paige Compositor, a mechanical typesetter that failed because of its complexity and imprecision. His wit and satire, both in prose and in speech, earned praise from critics and peers, and Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.Īlthough Twain initially spoke out in favor of American interests in the Hawaiian Islands, he later reversed his position, going on to become vice president of the American Anti-Imperialist League from 1901 until his death in 1910, coming out strongly against the Philippine-American War and colonialism. As his fame grew, he became a much sought-after speaker. The short story brought him international attention. He first achieved success as a writer with the humorous story " The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," which was published in 1865 it was based on a story that he heard at Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, where he had spent some time while he was working as a miner. He referred humorously to his lack of success at mining, turning to journalism for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Soon after, Twain headed west to join Orion in Nevada. Twain then became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, which provided him the material for Life on the Mississippi (1883). He served an apprenticeship with a printer early in his career, and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to his older brother Orion Clemens' newspaper. Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the " Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist.
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