Mark Twain, also known as Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an American writer and humorist. His life was spent in the years of the Civil War and Reconstruction era. He traveled all over the world, but also lived in New England and western America. His works were American classics that used humor or satire to convey a meaning. Mark Twain was an American inspiration because he was a dreamer, abolitionist, and writer. To begin with, Clemens was born on November thirtieth, 1835 in Florida, Missouri (“Mark Twain” Encyclopedia of World Biography). By just age twelve, he was a printer apprentice for the Missouri Courier in Hannibal. His job consisted of printing, cleaning, and delivering newspaper. In return for his service, he received room …show more content…
It was a humorous story about California gold mining experiences. Twain received great support from this, but he feared that he would become famous just for humor, which he thought was a joke of a job (“Mark Twain” Encyclopedia of the American West). As his stories grew popular, Twain had the opportunity to lecture. Although he got stage fright during his first one, Twain continued to lecture from California to Nevada (Cox 86). Twain was also offered the job of traveling to Europe to write the travel book, Innocents Abroad, for San Francisco Alta California. It was on this trip that he met his future wife, Livy Langdon of New York (Kaplan 455). With his new family, Twain settled in Hartford, Connecticut (Cox 118). It was here where Twain wrote Roughing It, an 1872 book about personal frontier experiences (“Mark Twain” Encyclopedia of the American West). Later on, Twain cowrote with Charles Warner to create the famous book, The Gilded Age (Cox 121). Its affect on America was shown with the statement, “So influential was this book that its title has served ever since to describe the boom-and-bust 1870s” (“Mark Twain” Encyclopedia of the American West). However, not all of Twain’s works were so popular. His 1883 Life on the Mississippi book captured his movements and adventures as a licensed pilot (Lauber