Samuel Clemmens, more commonly known by his pen name, Mark Twain, turned a fifth grade education and a thirst for life into stories that resonate through the ages. Born in Missouri in 1835, Clemmens had 5 older siblings and one younger. With his father and uncle both slave owners, he spent much of his childhood in the slave quarters soaking up the stories, songs and culture of the slaves that would come to flavor much of his writing.
Clemmens went to work as a printer's apprentice after his father's death when he was 11, setting type. A few years later he left Missouri for New York to take work at several newspapers. It was in New York that he began writing, mainly articles for the papers at which he worked. At age 21 he left New York to learn to be a steam boat pilot on the Mississippi River. That career lasted until the advent of the civil was in 1861. He did enlist in a volunteer unit for the Confederacy briefly, but that didn't take.
Clemmens followed one of his brothers west to Nevada after his failed attempt at military life in hopes of joining the burgeoning silver rush. He traveled from Missouri to Nevada by stagecoach. The people and tribes he met on his journey, as well as the adventures and mishaps, would show up over and over again as themes and characters in this stories.
Once again changing careers, Clemmens wrote for the Territorial Enterprise in Nevada. The Territorial Enterprise was the first appearance of Clemmens's pen name, Mark Twain. Restless again a quick three years later, he headed further west, to San Francisco. His first break as an author happened a year later with his short story "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" (a story he would later comment that he wished had never been published, claiming it did not live up to his writing standards).
The Sacramento Union hired him in 1866 to travel to what is now Hawaii (then known as the Sandwich Islands) and report back. That series of articles and stories became so popular that it led to a lecture tour and Mark Twain made his mark as an true "all around" entertainer. His next gig as a travel writer involved reporting on the East for Alta California. He embarked on a steamship bound for Europe and the Holy Land, from which he wrote a series of spectacular travel letters that would later become his book The Innocents Abroad.
It was during his tour of Europe that he met Charles Langdon. Charles had a sister, Olivia, who would later become Clemmens's wife. After his marriage to Olivia, he decided to settle in New York, where he was both editor and writer for The Buffalo Express. After his son was born Clemmens moved his family to Connecticut. In 1872 Clemmens suffered sadness in the death of his son, joy at the birth of his first daughter and success at the publication of his book Roughing It, based on his travels by stagecoach from Missouri to Nevada years before.
After the success of Roughing It, Clemmens was again ready for a change. With the burden of a family, another drastic move was out of the question so he turned instead to a change in writing style. He published his first social criticism with Charles Dudly Warner, called The Gilded Age in 1873. He and his wife had two more daughters and lived in their house in Connecticut for another 17 years. It was during this time of stability that he published his more famous works, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court.
Another milestone of Clemmens's work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was also the first book published by his own publishing company. That company, The Charles L Webster Company, also published the memoirs of Ulysses S Grant to huge commercial success. In spite of his success as a writer, Clemmens made enough poor investment decisions over his years in Connecticut that he eventually went bankrupt. It was at that time in 1891 that he moved his family to Europe in a bid to save money and get out of debt.
Eventually his publishing company failed. This was the impetus for a whirlwind, world-wide lecture tour to earn a living. While on tour, his daughter Susy died of meningitis in Connecticut and out of grief the Clemmens family never returned to the city of Hartford. Instead, they traveled Europe until 1900. Clemmens's observations of Imperialism while in Europe caused him to declare himself an Anti-Imperialist (in fact becoming Vice President of the Anti-Imperialist League).
In what is believed to have been a combination of grief over the death of his daughter and disgust over the abuses he saw in Imperialism during his travels in Europe, Clemmens began to write and lecture in a much darker tone. His politics and satire began to make him unpublishable in certain circles, exacerbated by his sharp introduction of Winston Churchill during a lecture in 1900. Faced again with financial distress, the family moved back to New York.
In 1903 Olivia began to show signs of illness. In an attempt to restore her health Clemmens moved with her to Italy, but she died one year later. He returned to the States to live in New York, where he remained until 1908. Eventually he decided to return to Connecticut, though not to his former house in Hartford. In 1909 his life was again faced with the bitter combination of happiness and tragedy. His middle daughter, Clara, was wed that year and his youngest daughter, Jen, died of an epileptic seizure. Clemmens himself died a scant four months after the death of his daughter. He was 74 years old.
Online Resources for Mark Twain:
Read Electronic Text Versions of Twain's Works
Searchable Collection of Mark Twain's Works
The Complete Works of Mark Twain - Searchable
The Official Web Site of Mark Twain
