Mark Twain

Mark Twain - short biography and literary slide show.

1. Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens 1835-1910

2. Mark Twain Was… He was an American author and humorist. He was called the “greatest American humorist of his age”. William Faulkner called him “the father of American literature ”. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, his pen name was Mark Twain.

3. About Mark Twain He was born November 20, 1835 and died April 21, 1910. He died of a heart attack shortly after a visit by Halley’s Comet. H e was born when it passed by in 1835 and predicted that he would die when it returned. Halley’s Comet is visible to earth every 75-76 years. He was the sixth of seven children!

4. About Mark Twain Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri (which was the influence on the town of “St. Petersburg ”). Missouri was a slave state, and so he was familiar with the institution of slavery (explored in his writings). One of his jobs included being a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River.

5. About Mark Twain At the start of the American Civil War (1861-1865), he enlisted in a Confederate local unit. The confederates were the slave states (especially the southern states) trying to break away from the Union and create the Confederate States of America.

6. About Mark Twain He married Olivia Langdon in February 1870. They had one son (Langdon who died of diphtheria at 19 months) and three daughters (Susy, Clara, and Jean). Through Olivia, he met abolitionists, socialists, atheists, and women’s’ rights activities . His oldest and favorite daughter, Susy, died of spinal meningitis at the age of 24. He refused to move back to Hartford after she died.

7. About Mark Twain He was neighbors with Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin” ) while living in Hartford Connecticut (where he wrote his most famous novels).

8. About Mark Twain He was fascinated with science and scientific inquiry. He was close friends with Nikola Tesla, and they spent a lot of time together in Tesla’s laboratory. Tesla was a famous inventor, electrical and mechanical engineer, and futurist.

9. About Mark Twain He wrote “ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”. Its sequel was “ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (considered “the Great American Novel ”). He wrote both books when he lived in Hartford, Connecticut

10. Mark Twain’s Novels The “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” was based on his youth. Tom Sawyer was a mix of Twain and his two friends, John Briggs and Will Bowen. The book introduced Huckleberry Finn, based on Twain’s friend Tom Blankenship.

11. Mark Twain’s Novels “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was his most popular book, and is read in many schools in the United States. It is more serious than “ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” . It is about a young boy’s belief in the right thing to do though most believed that it was wrong, and was a criticism of slavery. Twain was an adamant supporter of abolition and emancipation (of slaves).