He is an American writer. He was born in the township of Florida, Missouri. He spent his childhood in Hannibal, Mississippi. He was an apprentice typesetter, later published a newspaper with his brother in Hannibal, then in Mescatine and Keokuk, Iowa.
In 1857 he became an apprentice pilot, fulfilling his childhood dream of “learning the river,” in April 1859 he received his pilot’s license.
In 1861 he moved with his brother to Nevada and was a prospector in the silver mines for almost a year. After writing several humoresques for the newspaper “Territorial Enterprise” in Virginia City, in August 1862, he received an invitation to become a staff member. For a pseudonym he took the expression of the lots on the Mississippi, calling out “Merca 2,” which meant deep enough to swim safely.
In May 1864 Twain went to San Francisco and for two years worked for California newspapers, including as a correspondent for the California Union in Hawaii.
In 1884 he founded a publishing firm.
Twain came to literature late. At 27 he became a professional journalist, at 34 he published his first book. His early publications are interesting mainly as evidence of a good knowledge of the rough humor of the American outback. From the beginning his newspaper publications bore the traits of the fiction essay.
In 1872 he published an autobiographical book, The Hardened, about the people and mores of the Wild West. Three years later Twain published a collection of his best stories – Old and New Essays, after which his popularity soared.
In 1876 he published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the phenomenal success of the book led him to write a sequel called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
In between these novels, Twain published another autobiographical book, Life on the Mississippi. He was interested in the history of the European Middle Ages and wrote first the novel The Prince and the Pauper, then the novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
In 1895 he traveled around the world, lecturing in Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, India, and South Africa.
He died in Rudding, Connecticut.
Mark Twain on the Endurance of Women
There is nothing in the world so striking, so inexplicable, as the endurance of a woman. …Yes, there is nothing like a woman’s endurance. In war she would have shut out a whole regiment of men, whether in camp or on the march.
I still remember with delight that woman who sat in a mail carriage somewhere in the middle of the prairies when my brother and I rode across the continent to the West in 1861-she sat straight and alert, showing not the slightest sign of fatigue, one run after another.
In those days, the most important event of the day in Carson City was the arrival of the mail carriage. The whole town came out to greet it. The men got out of the carriage all hunched over and barely on their feet, physically and spiritually exhausted, exhausted and irritated to the extreme, but the women scurried out smiling as if they weren’t the least bit tired.