Mark Twain: Origins, Early Work, Success and Failure

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida Missouri, Sam Clemens’ family moved to the bustling Mississippi River town of Hannibal when he was four, which would later become the backdrop for such classic American tales as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Riverboat Captain

By age 15, Clemens worked as a printer and occasional writer and editor for his brother’s newspaper, the Hannibal Western Union, before setting out as a steamboat captain by age 21—a career he loved until the outbreak of Civil War halted nearly all civilian traffic on the Mississippi.

Reporter

Because of his early background in journalism, after Clemens drifted west first to San Francisco and later Virginia City. he took a job as a reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, where he reported on the largest silver boom in world history.

Mark Twain’s Origins and Works

It was there that Clemens adopted his pen name Mark Twain, which was a riverboat slang for two fathoms of water. Writing short stories on the side, Twain captivated readers with a distinctive narrative style that was both friendly, funny, irreverent and satirical, which soon made him one of the best-known storytellers in the American West.

After his publication of Innocents Abroad, about his five-month sea cruise through the Mediterranean, the handsome and affable 34-year-old became one of the most popular and famous writers in America.

In 1870, Twain married Livy Langdon, the daughter of a wealthy New York coal merchant, losing an infant son to diphtheria before raising four daughters to adulthood, although three would die tragically young. His most beloved books include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Roughing It, The Gilded Age and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

While his books proved wildly successful, his many business ventures ended in abject failure, obliging Twain to undertake a world lecture tour late in life to pay off his debts. He died on April 24th, 1910, at 74 years of age, making Mark Twain, one of the greatest storytellers of American life during the 19th and early 20th centuries.