Mark Twain, an avowed opponent of slavery and racial segregation, was the father of modern American literature. He had a profound influence on later great writers such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. His most popular books are known to most children. Twain’s books combine exciting and authentic stories about the Mississippi, the river to the banks of which Twain returned again and again, and which became for him the flow of his life.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who achieved worldwide renown as a writer under the pseudonym of Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri on 30 November 1835. He left school at just eleven years old and began an apprenticeship as a typesetter. In 1857, one of his life’s dreams came true – he had himself trained as a steersman and for several years piloted a Mississippi steamboat. It is from this period that his literary pseudonym emerged: in sailors’ language, the cry of “Mark Twain” signalled a navigable depth of “two fathoms”.
