Samuel Langhorne Clemens or commonly known as Mark Twain was an American writer and humorist. Twains writing is also known for realism of place and language, memorable characters, and hatred of bad faith and oppression. Clemens was born in Florida and then later on moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a Mississippi river port, when he was four years old. There he received a public school education. After his father died in 1847, Clemens was assisted to two Hannibal printers, and in 1851 he began contributing sketches to his brother Orions Hannibal Journal. Before long he was a master printer in Keokuk, Iowa; New York City; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and other cities. Later, Clemens was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River until the American Civil War brought an end to travel on the river. In 1861 Clemens served briefly as a volunteer soldier in an irregular company of Confederate cavalry. Later that year he accompanied his brother to the newly created Nevada Territory, where he tried silver and gold mining. In 1862 he became a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada, and in 1863 he began signing his articles with the assumed name Mark Twain, a Mississippi River phrase meaning two fathoms deep-safe water for a steamboat. After moving to San Francisco in 1864, Twain met the American writers Artemus Ward and Bret Harte, who encouraged him in his work. In 1865 Twain modified a tale he had heard in the California gold fields; within months the author and the story , The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, had become national sensations. In 1867 Twain gave a piece of his mind in New York City, and in the same year he visited Europe and the Holy Land. He wrote of these travels in The Innocents Abroad (1869), a book burlesquing those aspects of Old World culture that impress American tourists. In 1870 he married Olivia Langdon. After living briefly in Buffalo, New York, they moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Much...
