Mark Twain

3 Pages 731 Words

“It is noble to be good; it is still nobler to teach others to be good—and less trouble.” – Mark Twain


Mark Twain (1835-1910), was the literary alias of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, considered to be one of the founding authors of American fiction. Mark Twain did not only write novels, but travel narratives, short stories, , and essays. Considered to be one of the greatest humorists in American literature, his works about living on the Mississippi river include The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In writing this paper I intend to inform as well as prove Mark Twain’s impact on our culture as a whole, and his influence on American Literature as we know it.

Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. In 1839 when he was only four years old, Mark’s family moved a short ways to Hannibal, Missouri, which was at the time a small village along the Mississippi river. It was there that young Mark witnessed first hand the excitement of the colorful steamboats docked at the town dwarf. From these boats came comedians, singers, gamblers, swindlers, slave traders, and all of the other river travelers that the Mississippi had to offer.
Mark Twain gained his first literary experience when he went to work for a printing firm in Hannibal after his father died in debt in 1847. While writing for the Hannibal Journal Mark contributed reports, poems, and sketches. What is remarkable is that working for the newspaper was Mark’s only literary training, because he did not receive any formal schooling.
In 1853 Twain left Hannibal, and spent the next four years of his life traveling the eastern part of the country, working at printing shops as he went to support himself. He enjoyed the river so much that in 1857 Mark Twain became a riverboat captain. It was while working in this profession that Mark was exposed to all the people that the river had to of...