Mark Twain was born Samuel Clemens on November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. He was the sixth of seven children of John Marshall and Jane Lampton Clemens.

When he was four, the Clemens family moved to Hannibal, Missouri. Hannibal became the setting of his novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. His father died when Samuel was 12; the next year he went to work as a printer’s apprentice. At 17, he moved to St. Louis to work as a printer. When he was in St Louis, he earned his river pilot’s license. He found his most famous pen name while working as a pilot. To “mark twain” mean that an area is safe to navigate.

In 1864, Clemens began working as a journalist. In 1870, he married Olivia Langdon. They had 4 children; only one, Clara, lived a full life. Clara died when she was 88. Samuel and Olivia remained married until her death in 1904.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County was Samuel’s , now Mark Twain’s first story to be published in 1865. His first novel, Innocents Abroad , was published in 1869. His most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn were published in 1876 and 1885 respectively. Twain went on to write many, many more books, both  fiction and non-fiction. His last work to be published in his lifetime was Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1910.

Mark Twain died on Apri 21, 1910 at the age of 75. He remains a very large presence in literature to this day.

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