by Rick Bavera

Created on: May 08, 2009

Mark Twain is one of the most American of writers, one of the most American of Americans. He was born and died with Halley's Comet, grew up in the Midwest, worked at many different jobs, read, studied, learned, wrote, invented, traveled, had a family, had good times and bad times.

One of the things Mark Twain invented was himself. But we will get to that soon.

Mark Twain was born November 30, 1835 in Florida, Missouri. Halley's Comet was visible in the night sky. He always knew that Halley's Comet was visible when he was born. He was diagnosed with heart disease in 1909, and predicted in that year that he would die in the year of the return of the comet, 1910. He said, "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it....The Almighty has said, no doubt, 'Now here are two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'" (This quote appeared in Albert Bigelow Paine's 1912 book, Mark Twain: A Biography.) Mark Twain died April 21, 1910, and Halley's Comet was visible in the night sky during April of 1910.

Twain's birth name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. His father died in early 1847, so he had to go to work to help support his family. His first job was as a printer's apprentice, which he began in 1848. His travels began not long after this. After working for his brother, Orion, at the Hannibal newspaper, the Journal, he went on to New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati to work as a printer (beginning in 1853) and returned to Missouri at the age of 22 in 1857. His education came through reading at public libraries.

At this time, he earned his steamboat piloting license by 1859. During the Civil War, Twain moved west, and lived in Nevada (where he worked for a time as a silver miner) and California. In both Nevada and California he worked as a journalist.

One of his assignments led his traveling to Hawaii and further to the Mediterranean. His book The Innocents Abroad was a result of this period.

By 1870, Mark Twain had met Olivia Langdon and married her in February of that year. They were married in Elmira, and lived in Buffalo for a few years, where he worked as a journalist. Later (1871), the family moved to Connecticut, which was home for the family for the rest of Twain's life.

Mark Twain, as mentioned earlier, was also something of an inventor. He reinvented himself by using pseudonyms for his writing. He has become known as Mark Twain, even though his birth name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Other pseudonyms he used included "Josh" in some early writings, and "Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass."

Mark Twain kept scrapbooks for much of his life. One of the things that bothered him was having to glue things into his scrapbooks. He solved this problem by inventing a scrapbook with thin strips of glue already on the pages. He patented it in 1872. This was his one patented invention that actually earned him some money.

Mark Twain continued traveling, learning and writing his whole life. Some of his ideas were controversial. Some seemed pretty ordinary. Much of his life was exciting. Much was ordinary. He experienced tragedy, as well-the death of his father when young, death of most of his siblings, death of most of his children before his own death, the death of his wife in 1904. But all the while, he wrote. His written works are an essential part of American literary history, at the least. His is one of the most famous of American writers in the world.

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