by John Devera

Created on: July 07, 2008

Mark Twain IS America's Great American Novelist. No other author has had such a profound impact on literature in this upstart nation. And Mark Twain's life is as interesting as his stories. Now, the basic stuff everyone knows is that Mark Twain is not the author's real name, Samuel Langhorne Clemens. He used Mark Twain as his nom de plume because it was a common riverboat direction indicating that the water was safe to a depth of twelve feet. He also used the pseudonym Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass for three articles he wrote for the Keokuk Post.

He was born on November 30, 1830, the night Halley's Comet came into view. He died on April 21, 1910 at Redding, Connecticut. Halley's Comet was again in the skies. Samuel Clemens made a big deal about Halley's Comet and predicted that he would die when it returned.

When Twain went bankrupt in 1894 he went on a speaking tour and became the nation's most popular public speaker. He was sort of a sort of comedian for his time. He made a capable living with his writing, but he was a very poor business man.

Mark Twain had three dogs. Now that's not unusual, even considering that he really loved cats. What's weird is the names he gave his canine companions: I Know, You Know and Don't Know.

How about this one. The greatest writer America has ever produced never graduated from elementary school. He educated himself in public libraries as an adult while working as a journalist. He did receive an honorary Doctorate from Oxford University in 1907. He also became a fully licensed riverboat pilot on April 9, 1859. Clemens once said "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

His book Tom Sawyer was the first book ever written on a typewriter. I wonder if anyone has bothered to claim that they are the first person to write a novel on a word processor?

Huck Finn, the fictional character was based on a real person that Clemens grew up with, Tom Blankenship, the son of a drunkard in Hannibal Missouri. Becky Thatcher was based on Laura Hawkins, of Hannibal, Mo.

Clemens was a Mason. He even reached the degree of Master Mason.

In modern terms, Twain was a self-made man. He was completely irreverent, not having much positive to say about Christianity. His ethical thinking was way ahead of his time. He disapproved of vivisection on ethical grounds. He had little good to say about lawyers or politicians or bankers.

He wrote some 28 separate books, depending on how you parse it. Several very interesting works were published incomplete and/or posthumously. His posthumous work, The Mysterious Stranger is still very controversial, and it is not definitively a work by Mark Twain, although it is often ascribed to him.

Twain is buried in New York in his wife's family cemetery, and not in Hannibal. Mark Twain had four children, all girls. Three died before marriage. One, Clara, did marry and had a daughter who subsequently died without children, so Mark Twain has no living descendants. His legacy is his writing.

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