Mark Twain biography

His right name was Samuel Langhorn Clements. He was born in 1835 in a small village called Florida in Missouri. When he was four, he and his parents moved to Hanibal. His father died there in 1849. His mother was a poor widow and he started to work as deliery boy for Hanibal Newspaper. But he didn’t earn too much. When he was 15, he started to write humorous sketches, that were published in a comic weekly. One night he read a book about painted Indians shooting poisonous arrows to the tigers and monkeys dancing on the trees. It changed his life. He decided to visit that country. But he was very poor and had no money.
One windy day he was walking down the street and wind blew a sheet of paper to his eyes. It was 50 dollars banknote. He gave an advertisement about his found to the news, but nobody was looking for it. After the short time he left for Amazon with 50 dollars in his pocket. He travelled on the Paul Jones steamer. The pilot of this steamer made a pilot out of Sam. He needed some money, so he spent 4 years as a pilot on Mississippi.
On his twenty-third birthday he got pilot licence and took a pen name of Mark Twain.
But in 1861 civil war broke up and he lost his job.He started to write humorous sketches again. Sam also tried his fortune by looking for silver. But he found none.
In 1863 he was invented to Virginia City to work as a reporter for Territorial
Enterprise, the daily news. He became an editor and at the age of 29 he started to travel around the world. He was writing lots of funny letters and he was sending them to many papers. People loved them.
Once he met Livy Langdon, a beautiful girl with lovely face and black hair. He fell in love with her. They wanted to marry, but her father didn’t want to. After a short time he capitulated. Two weeks before their marriage, Sam wrote her the last of his 184 love letters.
They married in 1870 and two years later his first daughter Susan was born.
Twenty years between 1875 and 1894 were the happiest in his life. He had three healthy daughters and a beautiful wife, who loved him. One of his greatest books was written. It’s called: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But his happiness suddenly ended and everything turned.
His daughter Susan became very ill and she died at the age of 24. After the funeral Livy took her two daughters and travelled to Italy and England. When their thirty-fourth wedding anniversary came, Livy was very ill. One night she died. He felt horrible and lonely.

In 1909, on the Christmas morning his youngest daughter Jean died. She was found in her bathroom. The poor girl was epileptic. Sam said: “I’ll never write again.“
His only daughter Clara lived with her husband in Europe, but they both came to stay with her dying father. On the 21st of April 1910 Sam died at the age of seventy-four and his sad pilgrimage was ended.