Picture him: white beard and funny face Mark Twainâ??world traveler, witty novelist, and caring essayistâ??is an enduring symbol of literary America. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri in 1835, and soon moved with his family to Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River. His father died of illness when Clemens was only 12, and the boy began his professional life as a type-setter to help support the family. His elder brother Orion owned several newspapers, and Samuel soon began to work for him. One of Clemens' first published creative works was a humor piece for Carpet-Bag, a Boston magazine. The brothers pooled their resources and entered a period of financial failure and decline. This compelled the younger brother to seek his fortune outside of Hannibal. For the next three years Samuel traveled and supported himself with travel observations published by his brother's publications. He rejoined his brother in Keokuk, Iowa, where they attempted again to broaden their newspaper business. 

In 1857 Clemens planned to travel to South America via New Orleans from Keokuk, but was waylaid by an affable steamboat captain. He abandoned plans to produce travel essays for an Iowa newspaper and instead spent a number of years steamboating in Mississippi. It was during this period, as he acquired his steamboat license, that he first attached the name Mark Twain to a written creation. The first work published under the Twain name was a lampoon of one of his fellow steamboat captains. The steamboating period ended for Twain with the beginning of the Civil War. After a brief stint in the Confederate Army, Twain headed out west to re-join Orion, who had won a government post in Nevada after helping Lincoln's election campaign. Twain spent a year panning for gold, and another year making fun of panhandlers in short pieces written for the Territorial Enterprise, a magazine in Virginia City. After being challenged to a duel, Twain left for San Francisco where he was soon facing a lawsuit for libel. The lawsuit sent him packing for the Sierras, where he resumed panning for gold. The libel lawsuit was dropped, Clemens returned to San Francisco, and wrote "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", a short story intended for Artemus Ward but published instead by the New York Saturday Press. This story brought Twain national attention, and he began his writing career in earnest.

Mark Twain traveled, wrote, and laughed.  He was at times a journalist, essayist, novelist, businessman, and always, a traveler. As a correspondent for Alta California, he talked his editors into financing a five-month trip to Italy and the Middle East. His correspondence from the trip, compiled as The Innocents Abroad (1869), enjoyed popularity and critical acclaim.   Fame from the publication of Innocents brought him into the circle of the Langdon family from New York. Twain fell in love with Olivia Langdon, and their marriage included as dowry a stake in a Buffalo, New York newspaper. They settled in Buffalo, but after the death of Olivia's father, moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where they lived for twenty years. From his experience in the west, Twain produced Roughing It (1871). He toured England and then wrote, with Hartford neighbor Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age (1873), a critique of politicians of the late nineteenth century. His famed novels Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1885) followed. Along the way, and between trips to England, he wrote Tramps Abroad (1880) and Prince and the Pauper (1881). His final years were fraught with family misfortune; a brief sojourn in Florence for his wife's health resulted in her death, and his ill daughter separated from him. Still, Twain continued to write. Among his more notable works were A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and The Tragedy of Puddnhead Wilson, and the Comedy of those Extraordinary Twins (1894).  Mark Twain died three years after Olivia, in 1910, near Redding, Connecticut.

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Articles About Twain, Mark

Mark Twain in Unionville, Nevada	November 27, 2007
In the middle of a driving snowstorm in the winter of 1861, a ragtag bunch of prospectors arrived in Unionville, Nevada. They built a rough shelter into the side of the Humboldt Mountain and topped it with a canvas roof leaving an opening to allow for the escape of the smoking sagebrush they burned for warmth, when they could get it. It was an effective system, fueled by Indians hiking past the primitive structure laden with brush, which they generously shared.
Finding Mark Twain's Hannibal	November 27, 2007
Any modern pilgrim seeking the real Mark Twain will find his Mecca in a little town nestled in Bear Creek Valley on the Mississippi River some ninety miles north of St. Louis. It was Hannibal, Missouri and the river that defines it, where Twain consistently re-returned in his literature.
Interview with Jerry Sutphin, Expert Aboard the Delta Queen Steamboat	February 24, 2007
Gerald W. Sutphin has taken his passion of steam boating to an incredible level. Involved in a variety of river projects since opening his company, Visual Information, Ltd, in 1982, Jerry has written and co-produced a series of short films about modern river operations for the Smithsonian Institution. This permanent exhibition is now a part of the Maritime Section in The Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Over the past ten years, Jerry has become a staple on the Delta Queen steamboat, making presentations and acting as the on-board program coordinator. Currently, he has produced a video history of the Delta Queen named Tested By Time To Become An American Legend: The Steamboat Delta Queen.