In with Halley's Comet

Mark Twain died today in 1910. You can read his books on BorrowBox. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born and raised in the mid-western US state of Missouri. He left school at the age of twelve, as his father had died the previous year and money was tight.

He was apprenticed to a printer and later worked as a typesetter to a newspaper owned by his older brother Orion, also contributing humorous articles for it. When he was eighteen years old, he left his home town of Hannibal and worked as a printer in different places around the United States. He educated himself in public libraries.

His dream was to become a steamboat pilot, as this position brought prestige and a very good income. He was lucky to find a willing teacher in Horace E. Bixby, who taught him how to navigate the Mississippi and to have an eye for the currents and landmarks. Clemens acquired his pilot's license in 1859 and for two years he served as a pilot on the Missouri River. On the outbreak of the Civil War, the river traffic decreased and as a consequence Clemens left the river.

He joined his brother Orion again on the way to Nevada, where Orion was appointed territorial secretary to the governor of that state. Samuel had to find work for himself and was eventually taken on by the Territorial Enterprise newspaper in Virginia City. It was while employed here, that he first signed a travel account with his most famous pen name Mark Twain.

Twain also wrote for New York papers and the San Francisco Morning Call. In 1864 he challenged the editor of a rival newspaper to a duel and then fled to San Francisco in fear of the legal consequences. Here he became a full-time reporter for the Morning Call.

In 1867 he was funded by a newspaper to go on a trip to the Mediterranean and wider Europe and the Middle East. These travels were described in his book, The Innocents Abroad. On this trip he met Charles Langdon, the brother of his future wife, Olivia. Mark Twain and Olivia Langdon married in 1870 and had a son and three daughters. Their son died as a baby, and two of their daughters also died young.

Twain was a restless person and always travelling, within the United States and abroad. This did not cease when he was a husband and father, and his travels provided him with endless material for articles. In addition to essays and reminiscences, he wrote some novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) are his most famous. 

His attitude to slavery and native Americans changed with times. When he was a boy, the Clemens family had a slave, Jennie, whom they were forced to sell after his father's death along with their furniture to pay their debts. In his later life, Twain supported black people and helped some of them through their education. He was supportive of women and actively campaigned for women's suffrage.

Twain made a lot of money by his writings, but got into debt after the failure of his publishing house, which he ran from 1884-1894, and when the huge investments he made in technology did not bring profit. He had to go on world wide lecture tours to earn the money to recover financially. He and his family moved to Europe for several years, where they were able to live more cheaply.

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