The Autobiography of Mark Twain | Author Biography

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in the village of Florida, Missouri. When his father died in 1847, Clemens— who was only twelve years old at the time—was sent to be a printer's apprentice. While his early life was spent in Missouri, Clemens left home as a young man and was a traveler for the rest of his life, often taking on odd jobs, submitting various writings for publication, and assuming other odd jobs to fund his adventures.

Mark Twain
Mark Twain

After working as a riverboat pilot and spending some time in the South, where he was a Confederate soldier for two weeks, Clemens moved to the developing American West. He first gained popularity in small towns as a journalist using the pseudonym Mark Twain a nautical term from his riverboat pilot days. He later became known as a travel writer, humorist, and lecturer.

Clemens married Olivia Langdon in 1870. They had four children together: Langdon, who died as an infant; Susy, who died from meningitis in her twenties; Jean, who died from heart failure in her twenties; and Clara, their only surviving daughter.

An optimistic and enterprising man, Clemens used the small fortune from his literary success to make several bad investments, including starting his own publishing company, which sent him into debt in his late fifties. Clemens worked off his debts through a new lecture tour and then spent his final years traveling with his family and dictating much of The Autobiography of Mark Twain, the first version of which was not published until after his death.

Clemens left specific instructions for the release of all of his autobiographical writings, the next major installment of which is due to be published in 2006 by the University of California Press. He considered some of his writings so controversial that they are not to be published until 2406.

Clemens wrote hundreds of works during his lifetime under the pseudonym Mark Twain. Some of his most famous writings include novels such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; autobiographical and travel books such as The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrims' Progress, Roughing It, Old Times on the Mississippi, and Following the Equator; and short stories such as ‘‘The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," "1601," and ‘‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.’’ He also wrote numerous essays, speeches, and other short nonfiction works, many of which have been anthologized or reproduced in collections. In 2001, one of Clemens' s unpublished manuscripts entitled A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage was published by the Atlantic Monthly.

Clemens died from heart disease in his home near Redding, Connecticut, on April 21, 1910. He left behind a legacy as one of America's most important writers, a distinction that has only increased with time.