Mark Twain is wholly American. Often cited as one of America’s best authors, he published a great deal and wrote even more.

Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens and in his twenties adopted the pen name of Mark Twain. Twain spent his boyhood in Florida, a small town on the banks of the Mississippi River in Eastern Missouri. He had worked as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. To prevent the boats from running aground they had men throw a string with a lead weight on the end over the side. This was referred to as marking on the twine and enabled them to tell depth of the river.

His wife came from the family of a very wealthy coal businessman in Elmira, New York, and he spent his whole life trying to raise money to provide her with the style of life he felt she deserved.

He did not sell his many books in book stores but by subscription. In the late 1800’s people went door to door and sold books with the idea that people would receive a new book every month. Many authors of the time sold their books this way. They made more money with subscriptions than if they sold their manuscripts to a publisher. Clemens lived the role of Mark Twain and billed himself as such when he give his many lectures. He traveled extensively as a lecturer and to gather material for his many travel books.

He was enthralled with technology and was one of the first people to have a phone installed in a private home. His home in Hartford, Connecticut was one of the first homes built that had electricity installed during the construction. The first book written using a typewriter was Tom Sawyer.

When he wrote his two most famous books, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, they were considered to be against slavery. Many school libraries banned them because they were written in vulgar language and not in the accepted language of letters. But in 1935, Ernest Hemingway wrote that "all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.... All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since." Today many feel they should not be taught in schools because they use terms that are derogatory to blacks. This year, UC Berkeley sent out to incoming freshman a summer reading list consisting only of books that had once been banned. Tom Sawyer was on the list.