Biography of Mark Twain

        Tom’s Father died in 1847 and as a fourteen year old, he worked for his brother as a printer’s apprentice for the Hannibal Journal. He then took a river boat ride to New Orleans and convinced the captain to let him apprentice, and soon enough he became a pilot himself. His pen name, Mark Twain, came from the meaning that there was 12 feet of water or safe water for a pilot. Sam recently left behind by his friends, who joined up for the Civil War, pleaded with his brother Orion, who had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada, to take him along. So on July sixth 1861 Sam and his brother set off. In Carson City Samuel attempted Gold and Silver Mining, where he never struck gold. He moved to Virginia City and found a job at the Territorial Enterprise, a popular newspaper where he first used the name Mark Twain. Twain’s first book Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog was a success and led to his articles on Hawaii and his lecturing. He married Olivia Langdon February 2nd 1870. He moved Hartford Connecticut and built a unique house for his family. After going to his sister-in-law’s house he wrote A True Story, Repeated Word For Word As I Heard It  about an exslave who was reunited with family, and was Twain’s first use of race as a device in his writing. A while later he writes Tom Sawyer his most well loved book. Then his view on how blacks were still treated brought him to finish The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn.

His later life was depressing but brought out his onward pushing life force. He ran into debt as he invested in many worthless, new inventions, so he was forced to tour where he could make much money quickly, but despised the lecturing. During that time his daughter died. Then his wife died and another daughter became delirious. But through all this he kept writing until the very end, though it was darker than his previous work.

Mark Twain was a genius writer of the 19th century and left us with a treasure trove to examine. He once wrote “I am not an American, I am the American.”  This quote about sums up his writing life; he was able to flawlessly reproduce the American dialect while showing the regionalism that had become of America.