Biography of samuel clemens

He was an unsmiling fellow; according to one legend, young Sam never saw his father laugh. His mother, by contrast, was a fun-loving, tenderhearted homemaker who whiled away many a winter's night for her family by telling stories. She became head of the household in when John died unexpectedly. The Clemens family "now became almost destitute," wrote biographer Everett Emerson, and was forced into years of economic struggle — a fact that would shape the career of Twain.

Twain stayed in Hannibal until age The town, situated on the Mississippi River, was in many ways a splendid place to grow up. Steamboats arrived there three times a day, tooting their whistles; circuses, minstrel shows and revivalists paid visits; a decent library was available; and tradesmen such as blacksmiths and tanners practiced their entertaining crafts for all to see.

However, violence was commonplace, and young Twain witnessed much death: When he was nine years old, he saw a local man murder a cattle rancher, and at 10 he watched an enslaved person die after a white overseer struck him with a piece of iron. Hannibal inspired several of Twain's fictional locales, including "St. Petersburg" in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

These imaginary river towns are complex places: sunlit and exuberant on the one hand, but also vipers' nests of cruelty, poverty, drunkenness, loneliness and soul-crushing boredom — all parts of Twain's boyhood experience. Sam kept up his schooling until he was about 12 years old, when — with his father dead and the family needing a source of income — he found employment as an apprentice printer at the Hannibal Courierwhich paid him with a meager ration of food.

Inat 15, he got a job as a printer and occasional writer and editor at the Hannibal Western Uniona little newspaper owned by his brother, Orion. Then, inyear-old Twain fulfilled a dream: He began learning the art of piloting a steamboat on the Mississippi. A licensed steamboat biography of samuel clemens byhe soon found regular employment plying the shoals and channels of the great river.

Twain loved his career — it was exciting, well-paying and high-status, roughly akin to flying a jetliner today. However, his service was cut short in by the outbreak of the Civil Warwhich halted most civilian traffic on the river. As the Civil War began, the people of Missouri angrily split between support for the Union and the Confederate States.

Twain opted for the latter, joining the Confederate Army in June but serving for only a couple of weeks until his volunteer unit disbanded. Where, he wondered then, would he find his future? What venue would bring him both excitement and cash? His answer: the great American West. In JulyTwain climbed on board a stagecoach and headed for Nevada and California, where he would live for the next five years.

At first, he prospected for silver and gold, convinced that he would become the savior of his struggling family and the sharpest-dressed man in Virginia City and San Francisco. Louis when in she married William A. Moffet, a successful merchant.

Biography of samuel clemens: Samuel Clemens was born on November

His brother Orion had sold his Hannibal print shop to move to Muscatine, Iowa, to free soil, where his abolitionist ideas were neither a threat to his livelihood nor his health. Samuel at this point did not oppose slavery; his attitudes were shaped primarily by those held by his Missouri neighbors, especially by his father and his Uncle Quarles.

While his father never had many slaves, and in financial exigency had been forced to sell, he had helped uphold slavery in Missouri. His uncle was a farmer whose success depended not only on his own work, but on the labor of his slaves. In the years before he began his apprenticeship, Sam had spent many summers on the Quarles farm.

Biography of samuel clemens: Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November

But Orion's time in St. Louis had put him in touch with organized labor which, though often quite racist in its outlook, was opposed to slave labor as a system that undercut wages. When he moved to Iowa at the very end ofhe became active in anti-slavery politics, leading him ultimately to working for Lincoln's election in Sam's return to the Mississippi Valley in late spring of was not a return to his childhood home.

Now living in a free state, but with strong family ties to Missouri, his return to work for his brother was a stop-gap. Indeed, late in that year and early inhe worked in St. Louis before returning to Muscatine. Inhe left home again, this time for a stint of typesetting in Cincinnati. Itinerant as always, Clemens was but briefly satisfied in Cincinnati, and when on his way home inhe decided, instead, to change careers to become a riverboat pilot.

Multiply these numbers by 25 to find a rough equivalent to today's dollars. He had to borrow the down payment from his brother-in-law. Young Sam did not have good role models for how to spend money, but given how poor he was, the amount he was willing to borrow says something about how much he wanted to become a riverboat pilot. With the addition of the story of his successful efforts to get his younger brother, Henry, a job on a steamboat and his younger brother's death in a steamboat accident, found in chapters of Life on the Mississippi, Twain's own account of his days as an apprentice on a steamboat, and his account of the social and political circumstances of steam boating, is one of the best accounts of river life ever written.

But he left off the tale at the end of his apprenticeship, telling us next to nothing about his brief, successful career in boating. When fully licensed as a pilot in the St. Louis to New Orleans trade, Sam Clemens found regular and lucrative employment, enabling him not only to pay off his debts and help support his mother, but also giving him enough extra income to indulge himself.

Bless me! Why, six months ago, I could enter the "Rooms," [of the Western Boatmen's Benevolent Association] and receive only the customary fraternal greeting — but now they say, "Why how are you, old fellow — when did you get in? I must confess that when I go to pay my dues, I rather like to let the d—d rascals get a glimpse of a hundred dollar bill peeping out from amongst notes of smaller dimensions.

After sailing from St. Louis to New Orleans, he even took the return voyage aboard a boat captained by Horace Bixby, his own mentor from the riverboat days. Twain experienced considerable difficulty affixing accounts of his return journey with the earlier memoirs. The result, Life on the Mississippi, was initially perceived by some critics as a superfluously padded volume, even by the standards accorded subscription books.

Other critics, however, readily acknowledge the book as an often poetic depiction of life as seen from a pilothouse. In the ensuing years, the book has strengthened in stature as one of Twain's key achievements. Among the book's many champions is Robert Keith Miller, who proclaimed it in his book Mark Twain as the work that marked "Twain's emergence as a great modern writer" and "established Twain as something more than a biography of samuel clemens humorist.

In Twain finally completed The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the novel that is generally considered his masterpiece. Here Huck has already adapted somewhat to social order as dictated in his new home. He has even curtailed his swearing and smoking and commenced attending school. But on a winter day Huck discovers that his alcoholic father, whom he had not seen for a year, has returned home.

Huck's father then returns and takes Huck into the woods, where he starves and beats him. But Huck manages to escape and stage his own death. He flees to an island, where he eventually discovers a fugitive slave, Jim. The two runaways live together for a few days, after which Huck, disguised as a girl, returns to the mainland and learns that his father has once again disappeared.

More important, though, he learns that his own death has been attributed to Jim. Huck hurries back to the island and informs Jim of recent events. Jim determines to head north to freedom, and Huck decides to join him.

Biography of samuel clemens: Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the

They embark by raft, and one evening they crash into a ship. Huck manages to swim to shore, but Jim disappears. Once on the mainland again Huck befriends the Grangerford family, whose members are feuding with those of the Shepherdsons. The Grangerfords allow Huck to live among them, and they even provide him with a slave. One day, though, the slave reveals to Huck the presence of another slave, Jim, in the nearby woods.

Reunited, Huck and Jim steal away in their raft, already repaired by Jim, as the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons resume exchanging gunfire. Back on the river, the runaways soon encounter two carpetbaggers, the Duke and the King, who are hoping to swindle a family's inheritance by posing as the deceased's long-lost brothers from England. The con artists succeed in their plot, but Huck, pitying the dead party's three daughters, executes a complicated plan that leads to exposure of the schemers.

Huck and Jim then embark again on the river only to be reunited with the fleeing Duke and King. Now the four travelers join together in plans to conduct various schemes. In one town, though, the Duke hands Jim to authorities in exchange for reward money. Huck determines to help Jim escape. He presents himself to a Mrs. Phelps as her nephew.

She, in turn, mistakes him for Tom Sawyer. When Tom actually arrives, he cooperates with Huck and presents himself as another fellow, Sid. Huck enlists Tom's aid in the scheme to rescue Jim. Tom, however, develops an unnecessarily complicated plot. When they help Jim escape, a chase ensues. Tom is shot in the leg and Jim is recaptured.

But then the boys learn that Jim's owner has died, bequeathing him his freedom. They also learn that Huck's father, too, has died. Tom's Aunt Sally then offers to adopt Huck, but he realizes that the process of becoming civilized is not an enjoyable one. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is considered one of the greatest biography of samuel clemens in American literature.

Though initially condemned in some quarters as inappropriate material for young readers, it sold well, and it soon became prized for its re-creation of the Antebellum South, its insights into slavery, its depiction of adolescent life, and, throughout, its irreverence and compassion. Mencken, writing in the Smart Set inhailed The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as "one of the great masterpieces of the world," and Ernest Hemingway, in his book The Green Hills of Africa, championed Twain's novel as the most important work in American literature.

Today the prestige accorded The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn continues unabated, and it is a mainstay in classrooms throughout the spectrum of American education. Though with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Twain prospered as a creative artist, by the late s he no longer enjoyed the immense financial security with which he had been accustomed.

Much of his monetary woes derived from his involvement in a publishing house managed by his nephew, Charles L. Webster, who also served as Twain's business manager. Webster and Twain met with success in late when they issued the profitable Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant through subscription. But in ensuing years the company's success was undone by Twain's commitment to an alternative typesetting device being designed by James L.

Envisioning time-and cost-saving benefits from the printing machine, Twain, for several years, channelled massive funds into its development, which was slow and unsteady. In addition, Twain was involved in multiple litigations resulting from other unsound investments. His financial stability was no longer assured. Perhaps to revive his fortunes, Twain commenced work on another novel, one published in as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

Here Twain produced a harsh depiction of life in sixth- century England, which, with its repressive, anti-democratic society, he likened to that of post-Civil War America. The novel's protagonist is Hank Morgan, a factory foreman who suffers a blow to the head and regains consciousness only to find himself in medieval England, which is ruled by legendary King Arthur.

Ever ingenious, Hank counters court magician Merlin's superstitious ways by introducing electrical devices and gunpowder among the unsuspecting courtiers. As Hank gains in influence, though, he becomes increasing misanthropic, even slaying members of the Round Table. After his stock-market maneuvers undo the nation's economy, he is attacked by Arthur's surviving legions.

With firearms, explosives, and electrical devices, Hank and a handful of supporters manage to slay tens of thousands of Arthur's knights. But Merlin, disguised as a woman, eventually reaches Hank and places a spell on him, causing him to sleep until the nineteenth century. With its acid humor and bleak depiction of human progress--particularly technology--it charmed few readers accustomed to the delights of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Furthermore, the English public, which had long been enamored of Twain, reviled and condemned the novel as tasteless. In the following years, though, the novel gained recognition as an example of Twain's biting humor and his relentless disdain for technological development void of human considerations. Two years after he completed the book, his cousin Webster died, leaving Twain to manage--or, more accurately, mismanage--the company's affairs.

When Paige's typesetting device was finally installed ineight years after Twain began funding its development, it proved unstable, and its many parts broke down repeatedly. Twain was compelled to declare bankruptcy. Through shrewd maneuvering by his lawyer, who managed to have the courts force Twain to repay company loans to his own wife, Twain managed to salvage some of his money.

In addition, Twain negotiated a lucrative contract with Harper publishers for an edition of his complete works. He also undertook production of another novel, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twins, in which a low level lawyer's collection of fingerprints undoes a murderer in the Antebellum South. The novel centers on the activities of two children switched at birth by a mulatto slave, Roxana, in hopes of sparing her child the indignities of slavery.

The slave owner's real son is eventually sold into slavery, and Roxana's son, though reared with all manner of social advantage, nonetheless becomes an abusive profligate who turns to crime. When Roxana threatens to reveal his actions to legal authorities, he sells her to a slave trader. The son eventually commits murder, for which twin Italian immigrants are held responsible.

But the community's eccentric lawyer, Pudd'nhead Wilson, defends the innocent twins and reveals the true killer's identity by using a prized collection of fingerprints. Its humor is often grim, and its theme of miscegenation did not prompt widespread interest. Surprisingly, however, the novel managed reasonable sales, thus briefly relieving Twain of his economic hardships.

More recently, critics have made major claims for the work, some placing it among the finest American novels of the late- nineteenth century. To further extricate himself from dire straits, he commenced a series of successful lecture tours in Canada, Australia, India, and South Africa in the mids. He once referred to this novel as a "hymn to boyhood.

By all accounts the Twain's family life was a happy one, spent entertaining in their large home in Connecticut, while summers were spent in Elmira relaxing and writing. The Victorian era, noted for its ornate fashions, was popular with the family, who sometimes dressed in costume when entertaining. Their days of contentment were due to fade, however, when hard times, both with finances and with health concerns, would besiege the family during the next decade.

Although The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn received more critical and financial acclaim than did The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it was also greeted by a storm of controversy due to its explicit vernacular related to the themes of race and slavery. Unlike the stiff and formal prose of the Victorian genre, Huck Finn depicted language and life more realistically as it was in the nineteenth century.

Inwhen a library in Concord, Massachusetts banned the book, Twain commented philosophically to his publisher, "They have expelled Huck from their library as 'trash suitable only for the slums'; that will sell 25, copies for us for sure. Through telling the story of a young boy coming of age during the era of slavery, he combined rich humor and sturdy narrative with social criticism.

Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech, and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature built on American themes and language. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since. The first is the biography of samuel clemens of two look alike boys; one is a prince in royal English society and the other a pauper.

After an inadvertent meeting, they trade places, and learn that the differences in their lives involve far more than just the trading of robes and rags. The themes of social class and unfairness were favorite ones for Twain. So was the idea of switched identities as in the book, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson and the Comedy of Those Extraordinary Twinsan unfolding tale of the mix-up of two babies, one slave and one free.

Although not very popular among Twain's contemporaries, it presents, in comparison to his other works, the most sustained treatment of slavery. The book, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, is about a time traveler from the America of Twain's day, using his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England.

Although generally well received, some Britons flinched at the irreverent tone of the book towards royal monarchy and its traditions. Twain, unfortunately, like his father before him, was not an adept businessman. He lost money through his experimentation with new inventions, like the Paige typesetting machine. A publishing company venture, established to publish the memoirs of Ulysses S.

Grantsoon folded. Faced with mounting debt and the specter of bankruptcy, he and Livy were forced to close the house in Connecticut. Twain decided to do what he was best at, lecturing, touring, and writing, in order to pay off his debts. Leaving their daughters in boarding school and college they set sail for Europe. Twain was to live abroad for a long period of time before being able to return home to the United States for good.

Inhe paid off his debts and returned to the United States, a conquering hero. The world lecture tour, in which Twain visited India and Australiaamong other countries, was interrupted by tragedy when their oldest daughter, Susy, died back home in Connecticut of spinal meningitis. The entire family was overcome by grief. This episode would color Twain's later writings with pathos and dark humor.

Soon, other trials ensued. Always in frail health, Livy died in Jean, their third and youngest daughter, plagued by a lifetime of seizures, died on Christmas day in