Mark Twain

Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, an American author and humorist who lived from 1835 to 1910. He was born in Florida, Missouri, and grew up in the river town of Hannibal, which later shaped much of his fiction. He worked as a printer, a Mississippi riverboat pilot and a newspaper writer in the American West before his comic storytelling made him famous. His pen name is taken from a river call used to mark safe water depth.

Twain wrote novels, travel books, essays and short pieces, often mixing humour with sharp observation of greed, hypocrisy and injustice. He also became a popular lecturer, admired on both sides of the Atlantic. His books about boyhood on the Mississippi, especially Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, are counted among the central works of American literature. He matters for his vivid use of everyday spoken language and for his willingness to turn laughter toward serious questions.