Mark Twain was one of the most popular and well-known authors of the 1800's. He is recognized for being a humorist. He used humor or social satire in his best works. His writing is known for "realism of place and language, memorable characters, and hatred of hypocrisy and oppression" (Mark Twain 1).

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835. He was born on the Missouri frontier in a small log village called Florida. His parents had come to Florida from their former home in Tennessee (Unger 192). When Clemens was four, he moved with his family to Hannibal, Missouri, a port on the Mississippi River (Mark Twain 1). His father, who had studied law in Kentucky, was a local magistrate and small merchant (Unger 193). When Samuel was twelve, his father died. He was then apprenticed to two local printers (Unger 193). When he was sixteen, Clemens began setting type for the local newspaper Hannibal Journal, which his older brother Orion managed (Mark Twain 1).

In 1853, when Samuel was eighteen, he left Hannibal for St. Louis (Unger 194). There he became a steam boat pilot on the Mississippi River. Clemens piloted s

Marshall, Sara. America In Literature: The South. New York: Charles Scribner's Son's, 1979.

While vacationing in New York one summer in 1876 he wrote his most famous story of all. Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Bloom 50). It is about Tom Sawyer, who is a twelve-year-old boy who lives on the Mississippi River. He is mischievous, adventurous, and humorous. Tom is loved by readers around the world. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer brought Twain to the top of the best-seller's list, where he remained for eight weeks (Unger 199). Mark Twain once said that he liked Tom Sawyer because "Tom represented everything that he had loved as a boy, and because if the world thought like Tom Sawyer, everyone would forget about their troubles and become happier people" (Kunitz 355).

Kunitz, Stanley J., and Haycraft, Howard. American Authors 1600-1900: A Biographical Dictionary of American Literature. New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1938.

"Twain, Mark". Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia. Microsoft Corporation.

Unger, Leonard. American Writers IV: A Collection of Literary Biographies. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974.

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