Mark Twain

Did you know that Mark Twain was actually pseudonym? Do you know what his real name was? His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He was born on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. His father, Jon Marshall Clemens, a visionary lawyer, and rich landowner. His mother’s name was Jane Clemens. His family was wealthy, typical Midwest farming family. No one else in his family was at all an accomplished writer. I believe his early years really formed him into the writer he became as an adult.

When he was five his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri. When he turned 18, in 1853, he set out for the east as a journeyman printer, or what we today would call a free-lance writer. Twain went as far east as Philadelphia, and even New York city. After a while he was back In Keoruk, Iowa. By 1857 he was an apprentice pilot on the Mississippi River. For all of two weeks during the American Civil War he was a Second Lieutenant in the Confederate Army. The irony of this was that his family were all strong Union supporters. By 1862 he was the editor for the Virginia City, Nevada Enterprise. This is where he used the name Mark Twain to write for the first time.

He met with Charles Farrar Brown , who is also known as Artemus Ward. This meeting was a coming out party for his literary aspirations. His early pieces were mostly crude humor and tall tales. His self conflict caused him to leave Nevada for San Francisco, writing for several newspapers. His first celebrated piece was “The Celebrated Jumping frog of Calaveras County”, this made him a famous humorist, almost instantaneously. He lost a lot of money in his lifetime, first it happened with his when he backed an impractical typesetting machine, Next he put