MARK TWAINSamuel Langhorne Clemens

1835-1910

MARK TWAIN WAS…

• He was an American author and humorist.

• He was called the “greatest American humorist of his age”.

• William Faulkner called him “the father of American literature”.

• His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, his pen name was Mark Twain.

ABOUT MARK TWAIN

• He was born November 20, 1835 and died April 21, 1910.

• He died of a heart attack shortly after a visit by Halley’s Comet. He was born when it passed by in 1835 and predicted that he would die when it returned.

• Halley’s Comet is visible to earth every 75-76 years.

• He was the sixth of seven children!

ABOUT MARK TWAIN

• Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri (which was the influence on the town of “St. Petersburg”).

• Missouri was a slave state, and so he was familiar with the institution of slavery (explored in his writings).

• One of his jobs included being a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River.

ABOUT MARK TWAIN

• At the start of the American Civil War (1861-1865), he enlisted in a Confederate local unit. The confederates were the slave states (especially the southern states) trying to break away from the Union and create the Confederate States of America.

ABOUT MARK TWAIN

• He married Olivia Langdon in February 1870. They had one son (Langdon who died of diphtheria at 19 months) and three daughters (Susy, Clara, and Jean).

• Through Olivia, he met abolitionists, socialists, atheists, and women’s’ rights activities.

• His oldest and favorite daughter, Susy, died of spinal meningitis at the age of 24. He refused to move back to Hartford after she died.

ABOUT MARK TWAIN

• He was neighbors with Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) while living in Hartford Connecticut (where he wrote his most famous novels).

ABOUT MARK TWAIN

• He was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He was close friends with Nikola Tesla, and they spent a lot of time together in Tesla’s laboratory.

• Tesla was a famous inventor, electrical and mechanical engineer, and futurist.

ABOUT MARK TWAIN

• He wrote “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”.

• Its sequel was “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (considered “the Great American Novel”).

• He wrote both books when he lived in Hartford, Connecticut

MARK TWAIN’S NOVELS

• The “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” was based on his youth. Tom Sawyer was a mix of Twain and his two friends, John Briggs and Will Bowen.

• The book introduced Huckleberry Finn, based on Twain’s friend Tom Blankenship.

MARK TWAIN’S NOVELS

• “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was his most popular book, and is read in many schools in the United States.

• It is more serious than “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. It is about a young boy’s belief in the right thing to do though most believed that it was wrong, and was a criticism of slavery.

• Twain was an adamant supporter of abolition and emancipation (of slaves).