Biography of "mark twain” essay

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, most people would recognize him under his pseudonym Mark Twain – he was an US American author and his best known for his books The adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. A lot of people call him the father of American literature. Samuel was born as an premature infant on 30 November 1835 as the fifth kid of Jane Lampton Clemens and John Marshall Clemens in Florida, Missouri. At the age of 4 Samuel and his family moved to a small town called Hannibal also in Missouri. Even though Samuel? s parents tried to establish a economic existence, they socially headed for the gutter more and more and were forced to sell their own slave Jenny in 1842. Four years later they lived with a pharmacist and instead of paying rent they just kept the house in order. This time of his puberty and the seaport at the Mississippi River would later be the setting for the adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

At the age of 11 Samuel? s father died. The boy started an apprenticeship by the Missouri Courier ( newspaper ) as a writer. His brother Orion bought the Hannibal Journal in which some of Samuel? s first short articles were published. Samuel lived in Hannibal till his 18 year of life. 1852 he published “ The Dandy Frightening the Squatter” under his first pseudonym W. Epaminondas Adrastus Perkins.

From 1852 he travelled as a traveling writer threw the east and mid west. He spent a lot of nights in New York City and especially in the public library to improve his general education which he didn’t have a lot. Starting at 1855 Samuel lived in St. Louis and planned on becoming a helmsman on a Mississippi – steamboat.

He started an appropriate apprenticeship 1857 and two years later he became a license and started working in this job. In the Freemans lodge “ Polar Star Lodge No. 79” he was accepted 1861, later that year in June he was promoted to a fellow craft and in July he got his promotion as foreman. He even got kicked out of the lodge but he was taken back 1867.

Clemens was unemployed after the Civil War broke. Samuel Clemens went to the new founded Virginia City in Nevada, in which people from different countries all got together, as gold diggers. The work in the mines was really hard and Samuel didn’t enjoy it at all that is why he worked as a reporter for the “ Territorial Enterprise” in Virginia City. He reported about the saloons, the gold digging and gossip, which really abutted to libel. 1863 he had to leave the city because of a fight. On the 3 February 1863 he used the pseudonym Mark Twain for the very first time, with which he seriously started his carrier as a writer. Mark Twain is an expression of sailors slang.

Starting 1864 Samuel started travelling criss-cross through the United States: first to San Francisco, later to Nevada, back to California, then to Hawaii and again back to Nevada. His first stories appeared 1864/65 in Charles Henry Webbs weekly paper “ The Californian”. In 1865 he published the story “ Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”, which brought him to the American spotlight for the very first time. And then he started earning money with his writing so he started writing for New Yorker papers in New York City. 1870 Samuel married Olivia Langdon, which was paralyzed since she was 16 because she slipped on ice, she couldn’t get up for the following 2 years. Samuels and Olivias first child was Langdon Clemens he was really weak when he was born and died 2 years later. 1872 his daughter Susy was born.

He lived in Hartford, Connecticut for 17 years, where he lived as a successful author. 1891 he travelled to Europe, where he lived 9 years. First he lived in Berlin where he even sent his daughters to a college a few years later. He even lived in Wien, where his daughter Clara took piano lessons.

Samuel died 1910 as a celebrated person who achieved a lot in his life and is indeed the father of American literature.