Mark Twain
Mark Twain was the pen name of American author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who was born in Florida, Missouri, on the 30th November 1835.
Twain was the sixth of seven children. Only three of his siblings survived childhood: his brother Orion; Henry, who tragically died in a riverboat explosion, and Pamela. His sister Margaret died when Twain was three years old, and his brother Benjamin died three years later. Another brother, Pleasant died at the age of six months. His father, John Marshall Clemens, was a Tennessee country merchant and he died of pneumonia when Twain was only 11 years old.
In 1847 Twain became a printer's apprentice. In 1851, he began working as a typesetter, and contributed articles and humorous sketches, for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his brother Orion. When he was 18, he left and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. During the next four years Twain educated himself in public libraries and he joined the union. At 22, Twain returned to Missouri.
On a voyage to New Orleans down the Mississippi, the steamboat pilot, Horace E. Bixby, inspired Twain to pursue a career as a steamboat pilot. This was a well paid job with wages set at $250 per month (as a steamboat pilot needed a vast knowledge of the ever-changing river to be able to stop at the hundreds of ports and wood-lots along the river). For more than 2 years Twain studied over 2,000 miles of the Mississippi before he received his steamboat pilot license in 1859.
While training, Twain encouraged his brother Henry to work with him. Henry was killed on 21st June 1858, when the steamboat he was working on, the Pennsylvania, exploded. A guilt-stricken Twain held himself responsible for his brother’s tragic and untimely death for the rest of his life. He continued to work as a steamboat pilot until the American Civil War broke out in 1861. The outbreak of war stopped the boats travelling along the Mississippi.
Twain travelled extensively in the following few years, sometimes with his brother Orion and other times for his work. He was by now a journalist, after trying but failing to succeed as a miner in Virginia. He instead found employment with The Territorial Enterprise and this is where his famous pen name was first used.
Twain met Olivia Langdon in 1868 and it was said to be love at first sight. They were engaged a year later and married in 1870. Sadly, their first child, their son Langdon, died of diphtheria at 19 months. Twain and Olivia moved to Hartford in Conneticut and here they had three daughters: Susy (who died of meningitis), Clara and Jean. Olivia died in 1904, ending their 34-year marriage. The death of Susy triggered Twain’s depression in 1896, which worsened with the death of Olivia 8 years later.
Twain died of a heart attack on 21st April 1910 – interestingly Twain was born 2 weeks after Halley’s comet was closest to Earth in 1835 and he died a day after it passed closest to Earth 75 years later. He is known to have said he predicted his death; ‘I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together’.’
Twain left a lasting legacy through inventions, his journalism, his active campaigning for women’s rights, his opposition of vivisection, and of course his novels, such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and Pauper and Life on the Mississippi. Today he has many schools named after him as well as awards for literature and his home is preserved as a museum. |
