The Invalid's Story | Author Biography

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in the village of Florida, Missouri. Although his early life was spent in Missouri, Clemens left home as a young man and traveled around the United States, often picking up temporary printing jobs or other odd jobs to fund his adventures.

Travel remained a big part of Clemens' s life and he experienced many of the different types of travel available to people in the nineteenth century. From working as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, Clemens moved out west, traveling by stagecoach. It was in the west that he began to publish his own writing, including his first book, a collection of humorous tales, in 1867. In fact, Clemens's frontier-style humor became a trademark in many of his future publications. "The Invalid's Story''—which is believed to have been written in 1877, and which was first published as part of ‘‘Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion'' in the story collection, The Stolen White Elephant, Etc.... (1882)—is a good example. Even though the story takes place in the Midwest, it exhibits the same raucous humor that Clemens first introduced in his western stories.

Mark Twain
Mark Twain

‘‘The Invalid's Story’’ also featured another form of travel that Clemens had experienced. Train travel was the dominant form of travel in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Throughout his life, Clemens and his family were plagued by sickness. His firstborn son was exposed to the elements and died of diphtheria, much like the narrator in Clemens' s story, who eventually dies from typhoid fever—as a result of being out in the elements.

Clemens (as the more commonly known Twain) wrote hundreds of works during his lifetime. Some of his most famous writings include the novels, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. His autobiographical and travel books include The Innocents Abroad; or, the New Pilgrims' Progress, Roughing It, Old Times on the Mississippi, and Following the Equator. His stories include ‘‘The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches," "1601," and ‘‘The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories and Essays.’’ In 2001, one of Clemens's manuscripts, entitled A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage, was published by the Atlantic Monthly.

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