On February 3, 1863, a newspaper in the frontier town of Virginia City, Nevada, published a humorous article. The article was written by Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), who had come to Nevada from his native Missouri two years earlier. But instead of using his real name, Clemens signed the piece with what would become one of the most famous names of nineteenth-century literature: Mark Twain.
The legacy of Mark Twain in American literature can hardly be overstated. Novelist, humorist, and essayist, he was one of the first American authors to earn an international following. His writing made him a celebrity. And his most famous book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), is regarded by some critics as the “great American novel.”
Twain spent most of his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri, a city on the Mississippi River. The town’s ever-shifting population of thieves, grifters, cardsharps, con men, riverboat gamblers, and wandering adventure seekers would provide inspiration for many of Twain’s most colorful fictional characters.
After working in a number of jobs, Twain became a riverboat pilot in 1859. When the outbreak of the Civil War ended river commerce, he faced the choice of serving in the Confederate military or going west. After a few weeks in a Southern militia, he changed his mind, deserted his unit, and headed to Nevada. Twain spent several years in the West, where he earned his first literary fame. He married in 1870, moved east in 1871 to Hartford, Connecticut, which would be his home for the rest of his life.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, based on Twain’s childhood in Missouri, appeared in 1876. It was followed by Huck Finn in 1885. Named after its narrator, an uneducated young boy, the book follows Huck’s voyage down the Mississippi on a raft with a runaway slave, Jim. Huck meets a cast of characters inspired by Twain’s Hannibal childhood, including a pair of swindlers posing as French noblemen, a gentleman Southern colonel, and two families engaged in an obsessive blood feud.
Some of Twain’s other prominent works include The Prince and the Pauper (1881), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), and Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894). He died in Connecticut at age seventy-four.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- Twain was the vice president of the American Anti-Imperialist League, a group that opposed American expansion into the Pacific and annexation of the Philippines.
- According to Twain, his pseudonym was inspired by a term used by riverboat crews on the Mississippi. Boats needed a depth of at least two fathoms (twelve feet) to navigate safely; mark twain meant that the water was deep enough.
- Twain was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1907.
