FREE ESSAY ON SAMUEL CLEMENS

SAMUEL CLEMENS

The Life of Samuel Clemens A.K.A. Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens is better known as Mark Twain, the distinguished novelist, short
story writer, essayist, journalist, and literary critic who ranks among the great figures
of American Literature.
Twain was born in Florida Missouri, in 1835, To John Marshall Clemens and Jane Lampton.
As a new born Twain already had moved four times westward. In 1839 the family moved
again, this time eastward to Hannibal, Missouri. Hannibal was a frontier town of less
than 500 residents. As small as the town was it offered valuable materials and
opportunities for a young writer. Most of the residents knew Samuel well, considering
they were on the lower half of the social scale, such as poor whites and slaves.
The town of Hannibal was mostly used for farmers coming in from the countryside. It was
also a river town, swamped with travelers moving up stream and down stream. Some of the
travelers were steamboat men, circus performers, minstrel companies, and showboat actors.
Since all this action was going on all the time, that opened a big door to the beginning
of Samuel's stories. It provided a huge source of literary material.
Shortly after the death of his father in 1847, he ended the brief period of his schooling
to become a printer's apprentice. Like many nineteenth century authors, he was preparing
for his writing career later in life. Working as a Printer's apprentice he got practice
as a typesetter and miscellaneous reading. The first thing Samuel wrote as a used piece
was a few skits for his brothers Orion's Hannibal newspaper and a sketch, for The Dandy
Frightening The Squatter, published in Boston in 1852. The first real book ever published
by Mark Twain was Life on the Mississippi River.
Between 1853 and 1857 Clemens worked a journeyman printer in seven different places.
During this trip of making sketches and writing stories, he began eastward by boat. Twain
started writing letters telling about his visits to New York and the Middle West in 1867.
On his trip he seemed to have gotten him self in a lot a trouble such as disorderly
conduct.
After time passed Mark kept writing short stories here and there and a few sketches also.
However, in 1869 he became part owner of the Buffalo Express. In 1870 Mark met the girl
of his dreams and Olivia Langdon and Samuel Clemens were married in late 1870 in Elmira,
New York. In 1884 Mark Twain wrote one of his most popular stories Called The Adventures
Of Huckleberry Finn.
Although Clemens had a remarkable financial success with all of the books he had wrote,
he found himself bankrupt by 1894. After the death of his daughter in 1896 and his wife
in 1904 he became incredibly bitter and needed to express his feelings in some way so he
wrote a book called The Mysterious Stranger 
In Twain's later years he did not write as much but began doing more public appearances.
Twain spent the last three years of his life finishing his autobiography, including
stories from his life and the death of his beloved wife and daughter Four months after
finishing the book, on the evening of April 10,1910,Twain flipped through one of his
books and said goodbye to his doctor waiting at his bedside. That evening Twain passed
away leaving the world with only the memory of him through his writing 
Samuel Clemens or you could say Mark Twain still lives on in reader's hearts and minds
everywhere.
Bibliography
Works Cited
Edwards, William. The life of Mark Twain. 1999
http://www.midkan.cm/salinasouth/twain/mark/bio.htm.
Jones, Marvy. Famous Authors From The 18th Century. St Louis, MO: Randler Publishing,
1984
Killingsworth, Jacob. Research Paper Online. 1999
http://www.yahoo.search.mark+twain.com.
Lewis, Julie. The Life of Mark Twain. New York, NY: River House