MARK TWAINSamuel

Langhorne Clemens

November 1835-April 21, 1910

Born November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri.

At age 4, moved to Hannibal, Missouri, a growing port town located on the Mississippi River. Hannibal was a frequent stop for steam boats traveling to New Orleans.

When he was 12, his father died of pneumonia. At age 13, he left school to become a printer’s apprentice. He then joined his brother at a newspaper as an editorial assistant and found that he enjoyed writing.

http://www.cmgww.com/historic/twain/about/bio.htm

Mark Twain

At 17, he left Hannibal for a printer’s job in St. Louis. While in St. Louis, he became a river boat pilot apprentice and got his captain’s license as a river pilot. His pseudonym of Mark Twain comes from his days as a pilot. Mark Twain is a river term which means two fathoms or 12-feet when the depth of water for a boat is being sounded. "Mark twain" means that is safe to navigate.

Because the river trade was brought to a stand still by the Civil War in 1861, Clemens began working as a newspaper reporter for several newspapers all over the United States. In 1870, Clemens married Olivia Langdon, and they had four children, one of whom died in infancy and two who died in their twenties. Their surviving child, Clara, lived to be 88, and had one daughter. Clara's daughter died without having any children, so there are no direct descendants of Samuel Clemens living.

Mark Twain

Twain began to gain fame when his story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County" appeared in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. Twain's first book, "The Innocents Abroad," was published in 1869, "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" in 1876, and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" in 1885. He wrote 28 books and numerous short stories, letters and sketches.

Mark Twain passed away on April 21, 1910, but has a following still today. His childhood home is open to the public as a museum in Hannibal, and Calavaras County in California holds the Calavaras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee every third weekend in May. Walking tours are given in New York City of places Twain visited near his birthday every year.

Mark Twain

Bibliography (1867) The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (fiction) (1868) General Washington's Negro Body-Servant (fiction) (1868) My Late Senatorial Secretaryship (fiction) (1869) The Innocents Abroad (non-fiction travel) (1870-71) Memoranda (monthly column for The Galaxy magazine) (1871) Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance (fiction) (1872) Roughing It (non-fiction) (1873) The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (fiction, made into a play) (1875) Sketches New and Old (fictional stories) (1876) Old Times on the Mississippi (non-fiction) (1876) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (fiction) (1876) A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage (fiction); (1945, private edition), (2001, Atlantic Monthly). (1877) A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime (stories) (1877) The Invalid's Story (Fiction) (1878) Punch, Brothers, Punch! and other Sketches (fiction) (1880) A Tramp Abroad (travel) (1880) 1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors (fiction) (1882) The Prince and the Pauper (fiction) (1883) Life on the Mississippi (non-fiction (mainly)) (1884) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (fiction) (1889) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (fiction) (1892) The American Claimant (fiction) (1892) Merry Tales (fiction) (1892) Those Extraordinary Twins (fiction) (1893) The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories (fictional stories) (1894) Tom Sawyer Abroad (fiction) (1894) The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (fiction) (1896) Tom Sawyer, Detective (fiction) (1896) Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (fiction) (1897) How to Tell a Story and other Essays (non-fictional essays) (1897) Following the Equator (non-fiction travel) (1898) Is He Dead? (play) (1900) The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (fiction) (1900) A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth (essay) (1901) The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated (satire) (1901) Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany (political satire) (1901) To the Person Sitting in Darkness (essay) (1901) To My Missionary Critics (essay) The North Atlantic Review 172(April 1901) http://www.antiimperialist.com/templates/Flat/img/pdf2/ToMissCritics.pdf (1902) A Double Barrelled Detective Story (fiction) (1904) A Dog's Tale (fiction) (1904) Extracts from Adam's Diary (fiction) (1905) King Leopold's Soliloquy (political satire) (1905) The War Prayer (fiction) (1906) The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (fiction) (1906) What Is Man? (essay) (1906) Eve's Diary (fiction) (1907) Christian Science (non-fiction) (1907) A Horse's Tale (fiction) (1907) Is Shakespeare Dead? (non-fiction) (1909) Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (fiction) (1909) Letters from the Earth (fiction, published posthumously) (1910) Queen Victoria's Jubilee (non-fiction)

Works Published

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

Frog jumping video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTJAsZP2iLk&feature=related

Text:http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/projects/price/frog.htmhttp://www.cybique.com/Frogumentary/JumpingFrogStory.htmAUDIO

Mark Twain – Discovery Videohttp://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?guidAssetId=DE27FCB8-E91B-422A-A7A6-48F13EA22FA4&blnFromSearch=1&productcode=US