Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835, to John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton Clemens. When Twain was four, his family moved to Hannibal, a port town on the Mississippi River that would serve as the inspiration for the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. At that time, Missouri was a slave state in the union and young Twain was familiar with the institution of slavery, a theme he later explored in his writing.
Twain was colorblind, a condition that fueled his witty banter in the social circles of the day. In March of 1847 when Twain was eleven, his father died of pneumonia. The following year, Twain became a printers apprentice and in 1851 began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his older brother, Orion. When he was eighteen, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. When he was 22 years old, Twain returned to Missouri. On a voyage to New Orleans down the Mississippi, the steamboat pilot, "Bixby", inspired Twain to pursue a career as a steamboat pilot, the third highest paying profession in America at the time earning $250 per month ($155,000 today), a "princely amount". Because the steamboats at the time were constructed of very dry flammable wood no lamps were allowed, making night travel a precarious endeavor. A steamboat pilot needed a vast knowledge of the ever-changing river to be able to stop at any of the hundreds of ports (to take on and discharge passengers and freight) and wood-lots along the river banks (to purchase fuel for the steam boilers). Twain meticulously studied 2000 miles of the Mississippi for more than two years until he finally received his steamboat pilot license in 1858. He worked as a river pilot until the American Civil War broke out in 1861 and traffic along the Mississippi was curtailed.
Traveling in the West
Missouri, although a slave state and considered by many to be part of the South, declined to join the Confederacy and remained loyal to the Union. When the war began, Clemens and his friends formed a Confederate militia (an experience he depicted in his 1885 short story, "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed"), but he saw no military action and the militia disbanded after two weeks. His friends joined the Confederate Army; Clemens joined his brother, Orion, who had been appointed secretary to the territorial governor of Nevada, and headed west. They traveled for more than two weeks on a stagecoach across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains to the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada. On the way, they visited the Mormon community in Salt Lake City. Clemens' experiences in the West contributed significantly to his formation as a writer, and became the basis of his second book, Roughing It.
Once in Nevada, Clemens became a miner, hoping to strike it rich discovering silver in the Comstock Lode. He stayed for long periods in camp with his fellow prospectors—another life experience that he later put to literary use. After failing as a miner, Clemens obtained work at a newspaper called the Daily Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City. It was there he first adopted the pen name "Mark Twain" on February 3, 1863, when he signed a humorous travel account with his new name.
Life as a Writer
In 1867, on a tour of Europe and the Middle East (the source for his later collection of travel letters The Innocents Abroad), Clemens met Charles Langdon, who showed him a picture of his sister Olivia. Clemens claims to have fallen in love at first sight; in 1868, Clemens met her. The two became engaged a year later and were married in February 1870 in Elmira, New York. After settling in Buffalo, Olivia gave birth to a son, Langdon, who died of diphtheria after 19 months. They went on to have three daughters: Susy, Clara, and Jean. Their marriage lasted for 34 years until Olivia's death in 1904. Clemens outlived Jean and Susy. Clemens passed through a period of deep depression, which began in 1896 when he received word on a lecture tour in England that his favorite daughter, Susy, had died of meningitis. His wife's death in 1904, and the loss of a second daughter, Jean, on December 24, 1909, deepened his gloom.
In 1909, Twain is quoted as saying:
"I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together."
Samuel Langhorne Clemens died of angina pectoris on April 21, 1910 in Redding, Connecticut. Upon hearing of Twain's death, President Taft said:
"Mark Twain gave pleasure -- real intellectual enjoyment -- to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasure to millions yet to come... His humor was American, but he was nearly as much appreciated by Englishmen and people of other countries as by his own countrymen. He has made an enduring part of American literature."
Mark Twain is buried in his wife's family plot in Elmira, New York.