The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Twain, Mark
Twain, Mark
, pseudonym of
Samuel
Langhorne
Clemens
(
1835
–
1910
), American writer, born in Florida, Missouri, of a Virginian family, and brought up in Hannibal, Missouri. After his father's death in
1847
he was apprenticed to a printer, and wrote for his brother's newspaper; from
1857
to
1861
he was a pilot on the Mississippi, and from
1862
worked as a newspaper correspondent for various Nevada and Californian magazines, adopting the pseudonym ‘Mark Twain’, familiar to him as the leadsman's call on the Mississippi. Under this name he published his first successful story, ‘Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog’, in
1865
in the New York Saturday Press. This comic version of an old folk tale became the title story of The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches (
1867
), which established him as a leading humorist, a reputation consolidated by
The Innocents Abroad
...
[The entire page is 512 words long]
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