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Mark Twain , was a famous American humorist, novelist, writer and lecturer.

Although he was confounded by financial and business affairs, his humor and wit was keen, and he enjoyed immense public popularity. At his peak, he was probably the most popular American celebrity of his time. In 1907, throngs at the Jamestown Exposition crowded just to get a glimpse of him. He had dozens of famous friends, including such diverse people as Booker T. Washington, Helen Keller and Henry Huttleston Rogers. Regarding his work, another American author William Faulkner, is credited with writing that Twain was "the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs." sup

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, the third of four surviving children of John and Jane Clemens.

When he was four years old, the family moved to the river town of Hannibal, Missouri, hoping their fortunes would improve there. It was this town and its inhabitants that the author Mark Twain later put to such imaginative use in his most famous works, especially (1876).

Clemens' father died in 1847, leaving many debts. The oldest son, Orion, soon began publishing a newspaper and Sam began contributing to it as a journeyman printer and occasional writer. Some of the liveliest and most controversial stories in Orion's paper came from the pen of his younger brother--usually when Orion was out of town. Clemens also traveled to St. Louis and New York City to earn a living as a printer.

But the lure of the Mississippi eventually drew Clemens to a career as a steamboat pilot, a profession he later claimed would have held him to the end of his days, recounting his experiences in his book (1883). Clemens said that the characters he met on the river were a great help to him as he enjoyed reading more. He met every sort of character on the river. There was Horace Bixby (later the head pilot of the Union fleet), who took him on as a cub pilot, Mr. Brown, a tyrannical pilot who made Clemens feel like an emancipated slave when he no longer had to put up with him. His younger brother Henry was killed in a boiler explosion. But the Civil War and the advent of railroads put an end to commercial steamboat traffic in 1861, and Clemens had to look for a new job.

After a brief stint with a local militia (an experience he recounted in his short story, "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed" in 1885), he escaped further contact with the war by going west in July of 1861 with Orion, who had been appointed secretary to the territorial governor of Nevada. The two traveled for two weeks across the Plains by stagecoach to the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada.

Clemens' experiences out West formed him as a writer and became the basis of his second book, . Once in Nevada he became a miner, hoping to strike it rich digging up silver in the Comstock Lode and staying for long periods in camp with his fellow prospectors--another mode of living that he later put to literary use. Failing as a miner, he fell into newspaper work in Virginia City for the

Clemens maintained that his primary pen name "Mark Twain" came from his years on the riverboat, where two fathoms (12ft, approximately 3.7m) or "safe water" was measured on the sounding line, was marked by calling "mark twain". But it is often thought that the name actually came from his wilder days in the West, where he would buy two drinks and tell the bartender to "mark twain" on his tab. The true origin is unknown. In addition to Mark Twain, Clemens used the pseudonym "Sieur Louis de Conte".

Twain himself late wrote:

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The old gentleman [Captain Isaiah Sellers] was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river, and sign them "MARK TWAIN," and give them to the "New Orleans Picayune." They related to the stage and condition of the river, and were accurate and valuable; and thus far, they contained no poison. [...] I burlesqued it broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to the extent of eight hundred or a thousand words. I was a "cub" at the time. I showed my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed it into print in the "New Orleans True Delta." It was a great pity; for it did no any worthy service, and it sent a pang deep into a good man's heart. There was no malice in my rubbish; but it laughed at the captain. It laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful. I did not know then, though I do now, that there is no suffering comparable with that which a private person feels when he is for the first time pilloried in print. [...] He never printed another paragraph while he lived, and he never again signed Mark Twain to anything. At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands-- a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.span

Regardless of the source of the name, "Mark Twain" was "born" as his pen name in the office of the

In 1864, he moved down to San Francisco and wrote for several papers there. In 1865, Twain had his first literary success. At the behest of humorist Artemus Ward (whom he had met and befriended in Virginia City during Ward's lecture tour of 1863), he submitted a humorous short story for a collection Ward was publishing. The story arrived too late for that book, but the publisher passed it to the . That story, originally entitled "Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog" but now better known as "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," was reprinted nationwide, and called by editor James Russell Lowell "the finest piece of humorous literature yet produced in America."

In the spring of 1866 he was commissioned by the newspaper to travel to the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) to write a series of letters reporting on his journey there. On his return to San Francisco, the success of the letters and the personal encouragement of Colonel John McComb (publisher of San Francisco's newspaper) led him to try his hand at the lecture circuit, renting the Academy of Music and charging a dollar a head admission. "Doors open at 7 o'clock," Twain wrote on the advertising poster. "The trouble to begin at 8 o'clock."

The first lecture was a wild success, and soon Twain was traveling up and down the state, lecturing and entertaining to packed houses.

But it was another trip that established his fame as an author. Twain convinced Col. McComb of the on an American excursion to Europe and the Middle East. The resulting letters Twain produced for the newspaper reporting on the trip formed the basis of his first book, , a large and humorous travelogue that pointedly failed to worship Old World arts and conventions. Sold by subion, the book became hugely popular and put its author in a spotlight he never willingly relinquished for the rest of his life.

After the success of he married Olivia Langdon in 1870 and moved to Buffalo, New York, then to Hartford, Connecticut. They had four children: Langdon, Susy, Clara, and Jean. Langdon died in 1872, and the three others were born between 1872 and 1880. During this period, he lectured often in the United States and England.

Later he wrote as an avid critic of American society. He wrote about politics with his

Twain's greatest contribution to American literature is generally considered to be the novel . ...all American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.".

Twain began as a writer of light humorous verse; he ended as a grim, almost profane chronicler of the vanities, hypocrisies and acts of killing committed by mankind. At mid-career, with , he combined rich humor, sturdy narrative and social criticism in a way almost unrivaled in world literature.

Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech, and helped to create and popularize a distinctive American literature, built on American themes and language.

Twain had a fascination with science and scientific inquiry. Twain developed a close and lasting friendship with Nikola Tesla. They spent quite a bit of time together (in Tesla's laboratory, among other places). featured a time traveller from the America of Twain's day who used his knowledge of science to introduce modern technology to Arthurian England. Twain also patented an improvement in adjustable and detachable straps for garments.

Twain was a major figure in the American Anti-Imperialist League, which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States. He wrote , posthumously published in 1924, in response to the Moro Crater Massacre, in which six hundred Moros were killed.

In recent years, there have been occasional attempts to ban from various libraries, because Twain's use of local color offends some people. Although Twain was against racism and imperialism far in front of public sentiment of his time, some with only superficial familiarity of his work have condemned it as racist for its accurate depiction of the language in common use in the United States in the 19th century. Expressions that were used casually and unselfconsciously then are often perceived today as racism (in present times, such racial epithets are far more visible and condemned). Twain himself would probably be amused by these attempts; in 1885, when a library in Massachusetts banned the book, he wrote to his publisher, "They have expelled Huck from their library as 'trash suitable only for the slums', that will sell 25,000 copies for us for sure."

Many of Mark Twain's works have been suppressed at times for one reason or another. 1880 saw the publication of an anonymous slim volume entitled Twain was among those rumored to be the author, but the issue was not settled until 1906, when Twain acknowledged his literary paternity of this scatological masterpiece.

Twain at least saw during the Philippine-American War. It was submitted for publication, but on March 22, 1905, Harper's Bazaar rejected it as "not quite suited to a woman's magazine." Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to whom he had read the story, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth." Because he had an exclusive contract with Harper elsewhere and it remained unpublished until 1923.

In his later life Twain's family suppressed some of his work which was especially irreverent toward conventional religion, notably was published in 1916.

Perhaps most controversial of all was Mark Twain's 1879 humorous talk at the Stomach Club in Paris entitled (masturbation), which concluded with the thought "If you must gamble your lives sexually, don't play a lone hand too much." This talk was not published until 1943, and then only in a limited edition of fifty copies.

Twain's fortunes then began to decline; in his later life, Twain was a very depressed man, but still capable. Following the erroneous publication of a premature obituary in the , Twain famously responded: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated" (June 2, 1897).

His only son, who was sick from the time of his birth, died after Clemens took him out for a walk on a blistery day without covering his carriage. His most favored daughter died while Clemens was in Australia completing a lecture series. After giving birth to four children, his wife was sickly for most of her adult life. All in all he lost 3 out of 4 of his children, and his beloved wife, Olivia Langdon, before his death in 1910. He also had some very bad times with his businesses. His publishing company ended up going bankrupt, and he lost thousands of dollars on one typesetting machine that was never finished. He also lost a great deal of revenue on royalties from his books being plagiarized before he even had a chance to publish them himself.

In 1893, Twain was introduced to industrialist and financier Henry Huttleston Rogers, one of the principals of Standard Oil. Rogers reorganized Twain's tangled finances, and the two became close friends for the rest of their lives. Rogers' family became Twain's surrogate family and Twain was a frequent guest at the Rogers townhouse in New York City and summer home in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. The two were drinking and poker buddies. In 1907, they traveled together in Rogers' yacht to the Jamestown Exposition held at Sewell's Point near Norfolk, Virginia in celebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown Colony.

While Twain openly credited Rogers with saving him from financial ruin, there is also substantial evidence in their published correspondence that the close friendship in their later years was mutually beneficial, apparently softening at least somewhat the hard-driving industrialist Rogers, who had apparently earned the nickname "Hell Hound Rogers" when helping build Standard Oil earlier in his career. In one of history's ironies, Rogers was introduced by Twain to investigative journalist Ida Tarbell, who is widely credited with exposing the dark side of Standard Oil, and did so largely through information she obtained through meetings with Rogers. During the years of their friendship, influenced by Twain, Rogers helped finance the education of Helen Keller and made substantial contributions to Dr. Booker T. Washington. After Rogers' death, Dr. Washington revealed that Rogers (with a much-hated public persona) had been generously funding many small country schools and institutions of higher education in the South for the betterment and education of African Americans for over 15 years.

Although by this late date he was in marginal health, in April, 1909, Twain returned to Norfolk with Rogers, and was a guest speaker at the dedication dinner held for the newly completed Virginian Railway, a "Mountains to Sea" engineering marvel of the day. The construction of the new railroad had been solely financed by industrialist Rogers.

Rogers died suddenly in New York less than two months later. Twain, on his way by train from Connecticut to visit Rogers, was met with the news at Grand Central Station the same morning by his daughter. His grief-stricken reaction was widely reported. He served as one of the pall-bearers at the Rogers funeral in New York later that week. When he declined to ride the funeral train from New York on to Fairhaven, Massachusetts, for the interment, he stated that he could not undertake to travel that distance among those whom he knew so well, and with whom he must of necessity join in conversation.

Twain himself died less than one year later. He wrote in 1909, "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." And so he did. Halley's comet can be seen in the Earth's skies once every 75-76 years. It was visible on November 30, 1835, when Mark Twain was born and was also visible on April 21, 1910, when he died (although the exact dates of Halley's highpoint were November 16th and April 10th, respectively).

After his death, one of the prominent figures who paid public tribute to him was the President of the United States at the time, William H. Taft. In his words, "Mark Twain gave real intellectual enjoyment to millions, and his works will continue to give such pleasures to millions yet to come. He never wrote a line that a father could not read to a daughter."

Twain's Hartford, Connecticut home is a museum and National Historic Landmark, known as The Mark Twain House. Twain also lived in the latter part of the 19th century in Elmira, New York where he had met his wife, and had many close ties. He and many members of his family lie buried in a wooded knoll in Woodlawn National Cemetery there. A small octagonal study, given to him as a gift when he lived at Quarry Farm east of Elmira and in which he wrote parts or all of several works, is now located on the grounds of Elmira College.

The big town of Hannibal, Missouri is another town that features many Mark Twain attractions including a boyhood house of his and the caverns he used to explore that are featured in .

Two American steam-powered paddle boats traveling the Rivers of America attractions at Disneyland and Disneyland Paris are named after Mark Twain. An Audio-Animatronic Mark Twain and Benjamin Franklin host "We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregration which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God." (Corn-Pone Opinions)"The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner."Sam Clemens is a character in Philip José Farmer's Riverworld. In the TV version he is portrayed by actor Cameron Daddo., in issue #31, "Three Septembers and a January", where he is proclaimed Royal Storyteller by the Emperor of the United States, Norton I.In an episode parodying The Prince and the Pauper,Mark Twain appeared in the animated show Johnny Bravo to complain about the episodes inadequacies.The Mark Twain Papers and Project of the Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley. Home to the largest archive of Mark Twain's papers and the editors of a critical edition of all of Mark Twain's writings.