Mark twain

1835-1910

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, is a famous American humorist, novelist, writer and lecturer. Although he was confounded by financial and business affairs, his humor and wit was keen, and he enjoyed immense public popularity. At his peak, he was probably the most popular American celebrity of his time.

Born in the village, state Missouri, in 1835, Samuel was the third of four surviving children. His father was a poor lawyer who died when Samuel was 12 years old. When he was four years old, his family moved to Hannibal, a town on the Mississippi River much like the towns depicted in his novels. After father’s death Clemens left school, worked for a printer, and, in 1851, having finished his apprenticeship, Samuel began to work as a printer (Samuel's oldest brother Orion began publishing a newspaper “The Hannibal Journal”). While still in his early twenties, Clemens gave up his printing career and became a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi. He later stated in one of his books “Life on the Mississippi”(1883) that it would have held him to the end of his days. He said that the people he met on the river were a great help to improving his enjoyment of reading.

The Civil War and the advent¹ of railroads put an end to commercial steamboat traffic in 1861, and he had to look for a new job. He fell into newspaper work in Virginia City for the, where he adopted the pen name "Mark Twain" for the first time. His pen name came from his years on the riverboat, where two fathoms² (12 ft, approximately 3.7 m) or "safe water" was measured on the sounding line, was marked by calling "mark twain".

After the war, he went to Nevada with his brother Orion to prospect for silver and gold, but he did not like the life of the West. In 1864, he moved down to San Francisco and wrote for several papers there. In 1865, Twain had his first literary success. The story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (1865) brought him fame as a humorist. Having financial resources at his command, Samuel Clemens began to travel extensively. In 1866, he went to Hawaii, and the next year he toured Europe and the Holy Land, the basis for his travel book entitled “Innocents Abroad”. Wherever he went, Clemens observed life and people in order to gather material for his writings. He most appreciated the comedy he saw around him, but at times he also had a gloomy outlook. Both these views of life are developed in his novels.

On the European voyage, Clemens met Charles Langdon, who later introduced him in 1867 to his sister Olivia. Clemens immediately fell in love with her and married her in 1870 after a long courtship. They had a son who died in infancy and three daughters. The family lived in Hartford, Connecticut from 1871 until 1891, the period of Mark Twain’s best writing.

In 1876 he published “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. This book was quite new and original in American literature. It was followed by “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (1884), “Tom Sawyer Abroad” (1894) and “Tom Sawyer the Detective” (1896). In “Tom Sawyer” the author gives a picture of contrasting ways of living of the folk and bourgeois society. In “Huckleberry Finn” he comes forward as an enemy of slavery. As Ernest Hemingway said, “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain – “Huckleberry Finn”. His other famous books are: “The Prince and the Pauper”, “A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court”, which criticized feudal English and monarchy in general.

In 1888, Twain earned a Master of Arts degree from Yale University. He then was awarded two honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from Yale in 1901, and the University of Missouri in 1902. In 1907, he received an honorary degree from Oxford. His last steady pleasure was endless games of billiards that he played with his biographer, Alber B Paine. In 1910, Samuel Langhorne Clemens died at age 75 in his Connecticut home.

QUOTATIONS

• "I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education."

• "You can have heaven, I’d rather go to Bermuda."

• "Familiarity breeds contempt - and babies."

• "Golf is a good walk spoilt."

• "Truth is our most valuable commodity, so let us economize."

• "Never put off until tomorrow that which could be done the day after tomorrow."

• "A habit cannot be thrown out the window, it must be coaxed³ down the stairs one step at a time."

• "Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated".

• "There are several good protections against temptations but the surest is cowardice."

• "Suppose you were a congressman, and suppose you were an idiot. But, I repeat myself."

• "Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."

In the story "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," Mark Twain explores many weaknesses of human nature. Hadleyburg was a town, noted, praised and envied of the citizens’ honesty and incorruptibility, until a single man corrupted and surfaced weaknesses of individuals and the community as a whole. Dishonesty, greed and falling into temptation are the stories greatest examples of human weakness.