Mark twain 5
Mark twain 5Mark Twain
Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, he was born in Florida, MO, on Nov. 30, 1835, and he died on Apr. 21, 1910.Through this pen name he achieved worldwide fame during his lifetime as an author, lecturer, satirist, and humorist. Since his death his literary stature has further increased, with such writers as Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner declaring his works particularly Huckleberry Finn major influence on 20th-century American fiction.
Twain was raised in Hannibal, Mo., on the Mississippi River. His writing career began shortly after the death of his father in 1847. Apprenticed first to a printer, he soon joined his brother Orion's Hannibal Journal, supplying copy and becoming familiar with much of the frontier humor of the time, such as George W. Harris's Sut Lovingood yarns and other works of the so-called Southwestern Humorists.
From 1853 to 1857, Twain visited and periodically worked as a printer in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, corresponding with his brother's newspapers under various pseudonyms. After a visit to New Orleans in 1857, he learned the difficult art of steamboat piloting, an occupation that he followed until the Civil War closed the river, and that furnished the background for "Old Times on the Mississippi" (1875), later included in the expanded Life on the Mississippi (1883).
In 1861, Twain traveled by stagecoach to Carson City, Nev., with his brother Orion, who had been appointed territorial secretary. After unsuccessful attempts at silver and gold mining, he returned to writing as a correspondent for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. At first he signed his humorous and imaginative sketches "Josh," but early in 1863 he adopted the now-famous name Mark Twain, borrowed from the Mississippi leadsman's call meaning "two fathoms" deep safe water for a steamboat.
Twain went to San Francisco in 1864. Dubbed the "Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope," he achieved a measure of national fame with his story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865). A trip to Hawaii in 1866 furnished articles for the Sacramento Union and materials for the first lecture, on his return, in a long and successful career as a public speaker. The following year he traveled to the Mediterranean and the Holy Land, providing letters to the San Francisco Alta California that, in their revised form as The Innocents Abroad (1869),...
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