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Essay on Mark Twain and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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Mark Twain and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Samuel Clemens was an American writer and humorist who's best work is shown

by broad social satire, realism of place and language, and memorable characters.

Clemens was born November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. His family moved

to Hannibal, Mississippi when he was four. There he received a public school

education. Samuel Clemens was a difficult child, given to mischief and mis

adventure. He barely escaped drowning on nine separate occasions. His fathers

death was a calamity in which Samuel was not prepared for. Albert Bigelow Paine,

Clemens official biographer, offers the following glimpse of the young Clemens …show more content…

After leaving his first job he took his printers and

became a journeyman printer in Keokuk, Iowa, New York City, Philadelphia, and

other cities, and then a steamboat pilot until the break out of the American

Civil War which brought end to traveling on the river. After a failed attempt at

silver mining in 1862 he became a reporter on the Territorial Enterprise in

Virginia City, Nevada, and later in 1863 began signing his articles with the

pseudonym "Mark Twain," a Mississippi River phrase meaning two fathoms deep.

After the move to San Francisco in 1864, Twain met the writers Artmeus Ward and

Bret Harte, who encouraged him on his work. In 1865 Twain rewrote a tail he

heard in the California gold fields and within months the author and the story,

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," had become a national

sensation.

In later years Twain visited Europe and the Holy Lands which he wrote about

in the book, "The Innocents Abroad," which was published in 1869. This book

discussed those aspects of the Old World culture which impress American tourists.

1870 is the year in which he married his loving wife Olivia Langdon. After a

short time in Buffalo the newlywed couple moved to Hartford, Connecticut. In the

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