{\b Mark Twain (pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens)}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 30 November 1835 

{\b Date of Death}.: 21 April 1910

{\b Works}.

American writer, journalist and lecturer. 
Best known for novels for children The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its 
sequel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), also The Prince and the 
Pauper (1882). Satire includes The Gilded Age (1873) in collaboration with 
C.D. Warner.

{\b Featured Works}.

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, A Tramp Abroad, The Adventures of 
Huckleberry Finn,'Tom Sawyer Abroad, Tom Sawyer, Detective, The Adventures of 
Tom Sawyer, What is Man? and Other Essays of Mark Twain, The $30,000 Bequest, 
A Connecticut Yankee, 'A Missouri Maiden's Farewell to Alabama'.

{\b General Comment}.

Twain's childhood was spent in a small Missouri town where he was known for 
his story-telling, a reputation he maintained both as an apprentice printer 
and when he began working for his brother's newspaper. In 1857 he dropped this 
line of work to become a pilot on a Mississippi riverboat, where "mark twain", 
meaning two fathoms deep, was used to take soundings to stop the boat running 
aground. When he began work as a newspaper correspondent in 1862 Twain adopted 
this as his pseudonym. The stories for which he is most famous are also deeply 
rooted in Mississippi life. 
His first successful story Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog became the title 
piece to a collection of short stories which established his reputation as a 
leading humorous writer. For much of his life he continued to write the short, 
amusing sketches he had begun as a journalist and from 1867 he began 
delivering humorous lectures as well. He was also interested in the question 
of slavery and much of the power of  Huckleberry Finn comes from Huck's 
growing awareness of the humanity of the slave Jim.

 Twain also wrote some powerful satire, such as The Gilded Age, a critique of 
contemporary society. Some have argued that his marriage into a genteel and 
conservative family frustrated his potential for fierce satire. In the last 
two decades of his life, Twain became increasingly bitter and his later works 
became rather sombre; he had financial difficulties and his wife and two of 
his three daughters died. 
Twain is remembered largely as a humorist, but his greatness also rests on his 
skilled observation, concern for suffering and use of language. Huckleberry 
Finn has become a world classic and was described by Hemingway as the 
beginning of modern American literature.