Mark Twain Mark Twain Mark Twain (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. Among his novels are "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876) and its sequel, the "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1885), the latter often called "The Great American Novel". Twain was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, which later provided the setting for "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn". He served an apprenticeship with a printer and then worked as a typesetter, contributing articles to the newspaper of his older brother Orion Clemens. He later became a riverboat pilot on
Mark Twain He died in 1869 and as he could no longer need that signature, I laid violent hands upon it without asking permission of the proprietor's remains. That is the history of the nom de plume I bear." In his autobiography, Twain writes further of Captain Sellers' use of "Mark Twain": I was a cub pilot on the Mississippi River then, and one day I wrote a rude and crude satire which was leveled at Captain Isaiah Sellers, the oldest steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, and the most respected, esteemed, and revered. For many years he had occasionally written brief