Mark Twain
(biography)
Who is he?
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910) is an American
icon.
His books - like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn – are known all through the world. These books
define two sides of an imagined American childhood.
He was - still is - the cigar-smoking humorist-sage whose very name
inspires smiles: "As Mark Twain said..."
But Mark Twain's life and career were more varied and complex than
most people realize. He was a printer and journalist, steamboat
pilot, gold and silver miner, a newspaper editor, author, and
publisher. He was also deeply involved in American political and
cultural issues, and an active participant in several anti-imperialist
movements.
What did he look like?
• Although he first began to wear
his famous white suit in public in
1906, just a few years before his
death, that is the most familiar
image of Mark Twain for people
throughout the world.
The very beginning
• Sam was born in November 30,
1835 in a very small town called
Florida near Hannibal in
Missouri.
The very beginning
The village contained a hundred people and Sam “increased the population
by 1 per cent.” Most of the houses were of logs.
The very beginning
Beyond and beyond, shining in the sun, the Mississippi rolled to the distant
sea. The beside this river, Samuel Clemens grew into his boyhood.
The very beginning
• Sam saw negrous chained like animals for transportation to richer slave
markets to the South. His father owned slaves. For a girl of fifteen he paid
twelve dollars; for a woman of twenty-five – he paid twenty-five dollars; for a
strong negro woman of forty – he paid forty dollars.
• All the negroes
of his own age
were good
friends of Sam.
The young boy
has always
remember these
sad things.
The very beginning
• Better things Sam
remembered also. He
remembered below the
village woods “a heavenly
place” where he played with
the boys.
• When he was four Sam’s
family moved to Hannibal.
There in 1849 his father
died. Before the funeral Sam
promised to his mother to be
a better boy, to go to work,
and care for her.
• Sam soon had to live school and take a part time job as delivery and errand
boy for Hannibal’s newspaper; serving at times as grocer’s clerk,
blacksmith’s helper and bookseller’s assistant.
• Then he tried to write comic stories and sketches. His first known
publication was a story "A Gallant Fireman“. It was published in “Hannibal
Western Union” (January 16, 1851). Sam was 15 years old.
Pilot on Mississippi
• But the life of comic
newspaper author was very
hard and gave very little
money.
• Traveling by the streamer
Paul Jones to New Orleans
Sam Clemens liked the job of
steamboat pilot.
• In April 1857 Sam started his
four years of life on the
Mississippi – his pilot days.
Many years later he
described those days in his
famous book.
Pilot on Mississippi
• For seven month Sam trained a cub pilot. The training went on
and on. All signs of the sky were very important to him; at night
and in fog new dangers came: cool bargers, floating logs...
• “Piloting on the Mississippi River was not work to me, it was play
– delightful play, adventures play – and I loved it.”
• Sam listened to the Mississippi leadman’s call:
“M-a-r-k three M-a-r-k twain”
• On the twenty-third birthday he got a pilot’s license, and took the
name of Mark Twain.
• Sam was happy, and life was beautiful. He played the piano,
sang songs of the river; he was nice and everybody liked him.
• It was as pilot that Mark Twain learned to know human nature of
the world round him.
• When in 1861 the Civil War broke out steam boating ceased and
Mark Twain was left without work.
Happy years
• Trough the next years Sam lived
mostly in Nevada and earned his
own living as he could. He had
been a printer, a miner, a
newspaper man.
• When he was twenty-nine, he Livy
became a special correspondent
of the Sacramento Union in Samuel
California. Now he would travel
around the world, and he would
write of the places he saw and
the people he meet.
• Sam Clemens married Olivia
(Livy) Langdon on the 2nd of
February, 1870. The next day Olivia and Clara,
they went to Buffalo where Sam their elder
bought a share in newspaper. daughter, 1895
Happy years
• Livy’s father Jervis Langdon had bought and furnished a new and beautiful
house for the young couple in a fashionable street in Buffalo.
• Sam worked a lot, editing Buffalo Express, writing for the New York
magazines, and collecting material for a new book Roughing It – the story
of his Nevada mining and newspaper days. It was published when he was
thirty-six. It was a great success.
• The Clemens’s moved than to
Hartford, Connecticut. The twenty
years between 1875 and 1894 were
the happiest and the wealthiest for
Samuel Clemens. He wrote his best
books in Hartford, in a wonderful
house built for him and his family. The
rooms were large and always joyful
with company and friends. Here two
his daughters Clara and Susy were
born.
Mark Twain’s house
in Hartford,
Connecticut,
constructed 1874.
Mark Twain’s family
and house in Hartford
Stairway and hall
Dining-room
The famous writer
• From 1851 until 1871, Mark Twain
wrote primarily for newspapers and
magazines.
• The success of his second book, The
Innocents Abroad (1869), and a
contract for a third, Roughing It
(1872), allowed him to leave
journalism to become a full-time as an
author of books. Mark Twain was
writing and lecturing.
• In June, 1874, he began one of his
greatest books The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer – the book about his
own childhood.
• Mark Twain published more than forty
books and pamphlets during his
lifetime. Samuel Clemens in Oxford robe
Famous books by Mark Twain
• 1869·The Innocents Abroad.
• 1872·Roughing It.
• 1876·The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
• 1882·The Prince and the Pauper.
• 1883·Life on the Mississippi.
• 1885·Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
• 1889·A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
• 1897·Following the Equator.
• 1900 The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays.
• 1904·Extracts from Adam's Diary.
• 1906·What Is Man?
• 1906·Eve's Diary.
• 1907·Christian Science.
• 1907·A Horse's Tale.
• 1909·Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven.
The most famous books by Mark Twain
1876 1885
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer first
came out in 1876.
By the time Mark Twain died, it had
become an American classic, and it
remains perhaps the best-loved of all
his books among general readers.
One of pages from the first edition
Illustrations to the first edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Tom painting
the fence
Tom and
Bekky
Aunt Polly
Illustrations to the first edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
On the island At the Sunday school
Joe the Indian
Tom
Made by:
• Vershkova T., 404a, 2006